| Description |
1 online resource (xiv, 216 pages) : illustrations |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Summary |
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 find themselves personally involved with death: a klatch of obit writers in the desert, a funeral voyage on the Atlantic, a fourth-generation funeral director--even a midwestern museum that takes us back in time to meet our death-obsessed Victorian progenitors. Each story illuminates details in another until something larger is revealed: a landscape that feels at once strange and familiar, one that's by turns odd, tragic, poignant, and sometimes even funny. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-216). |
| Contents |
American ways of death -- Gone, but not forgotten -- Dismal trade: Sarah Peacock, memorial tattoo artist: under the skin -- The cemetery's cemetery -- Dismal trade: Kay Powell, obituary writer: the doyenne speaks -- The last great obit writers' conference -- Give me that old-time green burial -- Dismal trade: Oana Hogrefe, memorial photographer memory maker -- The house where death lives -- Dismal trade: Lenette Hall, owner, The urngarden: The business at the back of the closet -- With the fishes -- Dismal trade: Anne Gordon, funeral chaplain: funerals are fun -- Death by the roadside. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Funeral rites and ceremonies -- United States.
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Funeral rites and ceremonies. |
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United States. |
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Mourning customs -- United States.
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Mourning customs. |
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Undertakers and undertaking -- United States.
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Undertakers and undertaking. |
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United States -- Social life and customs.
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Manners and customs. |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
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Electronic books.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Sweeney, Kate, 1978- American afterlife. Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2014] 9780820346007 (DLC) 2013016629 (OCoLC)841228395 |
| ISBN |
9780820346892 electronic book |
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0820346896 electronic book |
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9780820346007 (hardcover : alkaline paper) |
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0820346004 (hardcover : alkaline paper) |
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