Admit it: You're fascinated by cemeteries. We all die, and for most of us, a cemetery is our final resting place. But how many people really know what goes on inside, around, and beyond them?

Enter the world of the dead as Katherine Ramsland talks to mortuary assistants, gravediggers, funeral home owners, and more, and find out about:

• Stitching and cosmetic secrets used on mutilated bodies
• Embalmers who do more than just embalm
• The rising popularity of cremation art
• Ghosts that infest graveyards...

Marilyn Johnson was enthralled by the remarkable lives that were marching out of this world--so she sought out the best obits in the English language and the people who spent their lives writing about the dead. She surveyed the darkest corners of Internet chat rooms, and made a pilgrimage to London to savor the most caustic and literate obits of all. Now she leads us on a compelling journey into the cult and culture behind the obituary page and the unusual lives we don't quite appreciate until they're gone.

In Remember Me, Time writer Lisa Takeuchi Cullen has created a humorous and poignant chronicle of her travels around the country to discover how Americans are reinventing the rites of dying. What she learned is that people no longer want to take death lying down; instead, they're taking their demise into their own hands and planning the afterparty.

Cullen hears stories of modern-day funerals: lobster-shaped caskets and other unconventional containers for corpses; cremated remains turned into diamonds; and even mishaps like dove releases gone horribly wrong....

To die, kick the bucket, to meet your Maker, dead as a doornail, get whacked, smoked, bite the dust, sleep with the fishes, go six feet under--whatever death is called, it's going to happen. In 1789 Ben Franklin wrote, "In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes." Death remains a certainty. But how do we die? It's the enormous variety of how that enlivens final exits.

According to death certificates, in 1700 there were less than 100 causes of death. Today there are 3,000. With each advance of technology, people find new ways to become deceased, often causing trends that...

No matter what your station in society, everybody has to go sometime. Even the wealthy, powerful, and world-renowned must ultimately meet their Maker--though some have departed this life more ignobly than they might have wished.

• From Mozart to rock and roll, which performers ended their lives on the wrong note?
• What famous U.S. bridge is named after an explorer who was eaten by cannibals?
• Everyone wants to hit the lottery, but does Lady Luck visit winners with deadly fangs?
• Plus: Learn the real fate of Gilligan's Island...

This book, the fourteenth volume of Oxford's internationally acclaimed Studies in Contemporary Jewry series, presents a variety of perspectives on Jewish families coping with life and death in the twentieth century. The book is comprised of symposium papers, essays, and review articles of works published on such fundamental subjects as...

This book has been written for those who must work with and give care to the dying. Our discussion is not simple narrative or description; it is a "rendition of reality," informed by a rather densely woven and fairly abstract theoretical scheme. This scheme evolved gradually during the course of our research. The second audience for this volume is social scientists who are less interested in dying than they are in useful substantive theory. Our central concern is with the temporal aspects of work. The theory presented here may be useful to social scientists interested in areas far removed...

This handbook explores the cultural and religious customs concerning death, burial, and mourning in countries throughout the world and covers all the major religions. At present there are more than 190 independent countries in the world, and the funeral practices in each are closely related to the culture, history and geography of the country concerned. Matsunami examines the ways people living around the world deal with the death of a loved one, and what kind of post-mortem arrangements are made. In doing so, he provides a better understanding of the world's cultures by viewing people's...