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The question of cleanliness is one every age and culture has answered with confidence. For the first-century Roman, being clean meant a two-hour soak in baths of various temperatures, scraping the body with a miniature rake, and a final application of oil. For the aristocratic Frenchman in the seventeenth century, it meant changing your shirt once a day and perhaps going so far as to dip your hands in some water. Did Napoleon know something we didn't when he wrote to Josephine, "I will return in five days. Stop washing"? And why is the German term Warmduscher--a man who washes in...

When her daughter's fiance died suddenly, Katherine Ashenburg was surprised to see how her daughter intuitively re-created the traditional rituals of mourning, even those of which she was ignorant. Intrigued, Ashenburg began to explore the rich and endlessly inventive choreographies different cultures and times have devised to mark a universal and deeply felt plight.

Contemporary North American culture favors a mourning that is private and virtually invisible. But, as Ashenburg reveals, the grieving customs of the past were so integrated into daily life that ultimately they gave rise...