How do Americans cope with death? Do our feelings about dying influence the way we live? How are our ideas of death different from those of our ancestors?

These questions and others are addressed in this innovative new book -- a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to the processes, practices, and experiences concerning death and dying in the United States. Drawing on sociology and psychology as well as history and literature, John S. Stephenson surveys the range of individual and social responses to death -- from our very conception of its meaning to the complex ethical dilemmas...