The American Way of Death
Author | : JESSICA MITFORD |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : |
Release | : |
Genre | : |
ISBN | : |
Download The American Way of Death Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The American Funeral PDF full book. Access full book title The American Funeral.
Author | : JESSICA MITFORD |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : |
Release | : |
Genre | : |
ISBN | : |
Author | : Jessica Mitford |
Publisher | : Vintage |
Total Pages | : 320 |
Release | : 2011-11-23 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 0307809390 |
Only the scathing wit and searching intelligence of Jessica Mitford could turn an exposé of the American funeral industry into a book that is at once deadly serious and side-splittingly funny. When first published in 1963, this landmark of investigative journalism became a runaway bestseller and resulted in legislation to protect grieving families from the unscrupulous sales practices of those in "the dismal trade." Just before her death in 1996, Mitford thoroughly revised and updated her classic study. The American Way of Death Revisited confronts new trends, including the success of the profession's lobbyists in Washington, inflated cremation costs, the telemarketing of pay-in-advance graves, and the effects of monopolies in a death-care industry now dominated by multinational corporations. With its hard-nosed consumer activism and a satiric vision out of Evelyn Waugh's novel The Loved One, The American Way of Death Revisited will not fail to inform, delight, and disturb. "Brilliant--hilarious. . . . A must-read for anyone planning to throw a funeral in their lifetime."--New York Post "Witty and penetrating--it speaks the truth."--The Washington Post
Author | : Eric Layer |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 258 |
Release | : 2020-09-21 |
Genre | : Business & Economics |
ISBN | : 9781735610924 |
Funeral service is dying. Cremation rates are sky-high, new competitors pop up every day, and an entire generation of funeral home owners are considering closing shop. But a thriving future is still possible. Eric Layer paints a vivid picture of what's threatening death care and everything mortuary owners need to know about how to save it.
Author | : LeRoy Bowman |
Publisher | : Westport, Conn : Greenwood Press |
Total Pages | : 200 |
Release | : 1973 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : |
In its secular aspects the American funeral appears to be an anachronism, an elaboration of earlier customs rather than the adaptation to modern needs that it should be. Properly employed, it is a highly useful and essential function of society. Improperly used it deteriorates into little more than a shabby opportunity to exploit or impoverish bereaved families. The purpose of this study is to acquaint the reader with the basis of charges of commercial exploitation directed at undertakers, to ascertain what peculiar circumstances influence the methods he uses, and to uncover the social and psychological factors that underlie conspicuous display. The research for this study was carried on over a period of five years. This scientific effort is made to ascertain if the positive functions anthropologists have assigned to funerary rites as observed in other societies also pertain to the funerals of modern industrialized societies, particularly American society.
Author | : Suzanne E. Smith |
Publisher | : Harvard University Press |
Total Pages | : 288 |
Release | : 2010-02-25 |
Genre | : Business & Economics |
ISBN | : 9780674036215 |
From antebellum slavery to the twenty-first century, African American funeral directors have orchestrated funerals or “homegoing” ceremonies with dignity and pageantry. As entrepreneurs in a largely segregated trade, they were among the few black individuals in any community who were economically independent and not beholden to the local white power structure. Most important, their financial freedom gave them the ability to support the struggle for civil rights and, indeed, to serve the living as well as bury the dead. During the Jim Crow era, black funeral directors relied on racial segregation to secure their foothold in America’s capitalist marketplace. With the dawning of the civil rights age, these entrepreneurs were drawn into the movement to integrate American society, but were also uncertain how racial integration would affect their business success. From the beginning, this tension between personal gain and community service shaped the history of African American funeral directing. For African Americans, death was never simply the end of life, and funerals were not just places to mourn. In the “hush harbors” of the slave quarters, African Americans first used funerals to bury their dead and to plan a path to freedom. Similarly, throughout the long—and often violent—struggle for racial equality in the twentieth century, funeral directors aided the cause by honoring the dead while supporting the living. To Serve the Living offers a fascinating history of how African American funeral directors have been integral to the fight for freedom.
Author | : Robert W. Habenstein |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 0 |
Release | : 1955 |
Genre | : Undertakers and undertaking |
ISBN | : |
Author | : Walter McCall |
Publisher | : Enthusiast Books |
Total Pages | : 0 |
Release | : 2003-11-08 |
Genre | : Transportation |
ISBN | : 9781583881040 |
The most complete, in-depth book on hearses and funeral cars ever! Beginning with horse drawn, highly ornate hearses up to today's motorized vehicles, this book takes you through the complete history of 20th Century hearses. Follow the overall style development from the early carved-panel columned and draped designs, through the limousine-styled Funeral Coach and side-loaders, through the sleek designs that have led to today's hearses.Photos and History on Henney, Eureka, A.J. Miller, Superior, and history of other large and small hearse-builders like Barnette, Economy, Memphian, etc., and the growth and decline of many of these companies. Over 300 high quality photos combined with in-depth text present the most complete history and evolution of motorized hearses ever. A must have book for all automotive enthusiasts.Includes an index of all the important past and present hearse and conversion builders in North America.
Author | : Kate Sweeney |
Publisher | : University of Georgia Press |
Total Pages | : 232 |
Release | : 2014-03-15 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 0820346896 |
An award-winning writer explores the patchwork American cultural history of grieving the departed. One family inters their matriarch’s ashes on the floor of the ocean. Another holds a memorial weenie roast each year at a green-burial cemetery. An 1898 ad for embalming fluid promises, “You can make mummies with it!” while a leading contemporary burial vault is touted as impervious to the elements. A grieving mother, 150 years ago, might spend her days tending a garden at her daughter’s grave. Today, she might tend the roadside memorial she erected where her daughter was killed. One mother wears a locket containing her daughter’s hair; the other, a necklace containing her ashes. What happens after someone dies depends on our personal stories and on where those stories fall in a larger tale―that of death in America. It’s a powerful tale that we usually keep hidden from our everyday lives until we have to face it. American Afterlife by Kate Sweeney reveals this world through a collective portrait of Americans past and present who are personally involved with death: obit writers in the desert, an Atlantic funeral voyage, a fourth-generation funeral director―even a midwestern museum that shows us our death-obsessed Victorian progenitors. Each story illuminates details in another, revealing a landscape that feels at once strange and familiar, one that’s by turns odd, tragic, poignant, and sometimes even funny. “Sweeney’s quest for the “why” behind mourning rituals has given us a book in the best tradition of narrative journalism.”—Jessica Handler, author of Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing about Grief and Loss
Author | : Jacqueline S. Thursby |
Publisher | : University Press of Kentucky |
Total Pages | : 168 |
Release | : 2014-07-11 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 0813149878 |
When Evelyn Waugh wrote The Loved One (1948) as a satire of the elaborate preparations and memorialization of the dead taking place in his time, he had no way of knowing how technical and extraordinarily creative human funerary practices would become in the ensuing decades. In Funeral Festivals in America, author Jacqueline S. Thursby explores how modern American funerals and their accompanying rituals have evolved into affairs that help the living with the healing process. Thursby suggests that there is irony in the festivities surrounding death. The typical American response to death often develops into a celebration that reestablishes links or strengthens ties between family members and friends. The increasingly important funerary banquet, for example, honors an often well-lived life in order to help survivors accept the change that death brings and to provide healing fellowship. At such celebrations and other forms of the traditional wake, participants often use humor to add another dimension to expressing both the personality of the deceased and their ties to a particular ethnic heritage. In her research and interviews, Thursby discovered the paramount importance of food as part of the funeral ritual. During times of loss, individuals want to be consoled, and this is often accomplished through the preparation and consumption of nourishing, comforting foods. In the Intermountain West, Funeral Potatoes, a potato-cheese casserole, has become an expectation at funeral meals; Muslim families often bring honey flavored fruits and vegetables to the funeral table for their consoling familiarity; and many Mexican Americans continue the tradition of tamale making as a way to bring people together to talk, to share memories, and to simply enjoy being together. Funeral Festivals in America examines rituals for loved ones separated by death, frivolities surrounding death, funeral foods and feasts, post-funeral rites, and personalized memorials and grave markers. Thursby concludes that though Americans come from many different cultural traditions, they deal with death in a largely similar approach. They emphasize unity and embrace rites that soothe the distress of death as a way to heal and move forward.
Author | : LeRoy Bowman |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 176 |
Release | : 1964 |
Genre | : Funeral rites and ceremonies |
ISBN | : |