If your interest lies in the history of small town living (especially the small town of Palestine, Arkansas), a narrative historical version of the birth, growth, and development of the town with chronological data, and testimonials of a number of its residents, then this book is for you. With it comes a story about a homeless woman who spent her life working in the homes of others for nothing more than food to eat and a bed to sleep in. She never received any money for her services. This woman never once traveled outside the Arkansas Delta and one whose final resting place has been at the Bell Cemetery since November 3, 1973. In addition, the book also contains an alphabetical listing of the people buried at the Palestine Bell Cemetery from 1800 to May 31, 2017. Why write about a woman who died over forty years ago, one might ask. And the answer would be: “Every life has a story and every story has a life regardless of how simple it might be!” Some of the world’s greatest people were typically known only by a “few” within the town they lived—and not commonly known outside of it. That was Jesus’ story too.

For the first time the true story of the early struggles to start the cemetery that became the famous Forest Lawn Memorial-Park are told by former Forest Lawn CEO John F. Llewellyn, the third and last generation to manage this uniquely Southern California institution.

A hauntingly beautiful travel guide to the world's most visited cemeteries, told through spectacular photography andtheir unique histories and residents. More than 3.5 million tourists flock to Paris's Pè Lachaise cemetery each year.They are lured there, and to many cemeteries around the world, by a combination of natural beauty, ornate tombstones and crypts, notable residents, vivid history, and even wildlife. Many also visit Mount Koya cemetery in Japan, where 10,000 lanterns illuminate the forest setting, or graveside in Oaxaca, Mexico to witness Day of the Dead fiestas. Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery has gorgeous night tours of the Southern Gothic tombstones under moss-covered trees that is one of the most popular draws of the city. 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die features these unforgettable cemeteries, along with 196 more, seen in more than 300 photographs. In this bucket list of travel musts, author Loren Rhoads, who hosts the popular Cemetery Travel blog, details the history and features that make each destination unique. Throughout will be profiles of famous people buried there, striking memorials by noted artists, and unusual elements, such as the hand carved wood grave markers in the Merry Cemetery in Romania.

This book relates the stories and describes the memorials of the people buried in Shelby, North Carolina's historic Sunset Cemetery, a microcosm of the Southeastern United States. The authors, an academic and a journalist, detail the lives and memories of people who are buried here, from Civil War soldiers to those who created the Jim Crow South and promoted the narrative of the Lost Cause. Featured are authors W.J. Cash and Thomas Dixon, whose racist novel was the basis for The Birth of a Nation. Drawn from historical research and local memory, it includes the tales of musicians Don Gibson and Bobby "Pepper Head" London, as well as a paratrooper who died in the Battle of the Bulge and other ordinary folks who rest in the cemetery. A bigger responsibility is to give a voice to the silenced, enslaved people of color buried in unmarked graves. Cemeteries are sacred places where artistry and memory meet--to understand, we need both the tales and the tombstones.

In Birth of a Cemetery, John F. Llewellyn reminds us that even supremely successful enterprises often emerge from chaotic beginnings. Llewellyn's book is essential reading for cemetery scholars and fans who want the inside story of how modern cemeteries develop, and the challenges they face. Llewellyn chronicles the mindboggling organizational drama from 1905 until the mid-1920s accompanying the founding of what was first called Forest Lawn Cemetery. While early American cemeteries were founded by faith-based organizations or public entities, by this time, cemeteries had become hybrid institutions, partly non-profit, partly profit. They exemplified the period's seemingly unlimited, and largely unregulated entrepreneurial spirit.Forest Lawn also mirrored the booming, racially divided city and suburbs of early 20th century Los Angeles. The cemetery's founders recognized the opportunity that growth represented, but had trouble settling on a management and sales program that would allow them to fully exploit it. Instead, they squabbled, backbit, and gossiped as they endlessly tried to find a system that would work, and time after time theirs produced more debt than profit.Some familiar faces in California history, Hubert Eaton, architect T. Paterson Ross, Motley Flint, the Glassell family, among others, populate the story. Many are civic leaders, while more than a few are scoundrels trying to figure out that most LA of pursuits, a quick success. Eventually, Hubert Eaton would take control, invent his version of the "memorial-park," and infuse the landscape with the values for which the institution became famous, middle class families, patriotism, and faith. Within a decade, as Llewellyn demonstrates in the final chapters, the newly christened Forest Lawn Memorial-Park would become the model for most cemeteries founded in the US.

WINNER OF THE 2022 PULITZER PRIZE "A compelling and important history that this nation desperately needs to hear." -Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative Chasing Me to My Grave presents the late artist Winfred Rembert's breathtaking body of work alongside his story, as told to Tufts Philosopher Erin I. Kelly. Rembert grew up in a family of Georgia field laborers, joined the Civil Rights Movement as a teenager, survived a near-lynching at the hands of law enforcement, and spent seven years on chain gangs. There he learned the leather tooling skills that became the bedrock of his autobiographical paintings. Years later, encouraged by his wife, Patsy, Rembert brought his past to vibrant life in scenes of joy and terror, from the promise of southern Black commerce to the brutality of chain gang labor. Vivid, confrontational, revelatory, and complex, Chasing Me to My Grave is a searing memoir in prose and painted leather that celebrates Black life and summons readers to confront painful and urgent realities at the heart of American society. Booklist #1 Nonfiction Book of the Year * African American Literary Book Club (AALBC) #1 Nonfiction Bestseller * Named a Best Book of the Year by: NPR, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, Barnes & Noble, Hudson Booksellers, ARTnews, and more * Amazon Editors' Pick * Carnegie Medal of Excellence Longlist

“Examines our evolving mourning rituals, specifically in relationship to cemeteries . . . a levelheaded report on the death care industry.” —Los Angeles Review of Books In modern society, we have professionalized our care for the dying and deceased in hospitals and hospices, churches and funeral homes, cemeteries and mausoleums to aid dazed and disoriented mourners. But these formal institutions can be alienating and cold, leaving people craving a more humane mourning and burial process. The burial treatment itself has come to be seen as wasteful and harmful—marked by chemicals, plush caskets, and manicured greens. Today’s bereaved are therefore increasingly turning away from the old ways of death and searching for a more personalized, environmentally responsible, and ethical means of grief. Is the Cemetery Dead? gets to the heart of the tragedy of death, chronicling how Americans are inventing new or adapting old traditions, burial places, and memorials. In illustrative prose, David Charles Sloane shows how people are taking control of their grief by bringing their relatives home to die, interring them in natural burial grounds, mourning them online, or memorializing them streetside with a shrine, ghost bike, or RIP mural. Today’s mourners are increasingly breaking free of conventions to better embrace the person they want to remember. As Sloane shows, these changes threaten the future of the cemetery, causing cemeteries to seek to become more responsive institutions. A trained historian, Sloane is also descendent from multiple generations of cemetery managers and he grew up in Syracuse’s Oakwood Cemetery. Enriched by these experiences, as well as his personal struggles with overwhelming grief, Sloane presents a remarkable and accessible tour of our new American way of death.

"As much a book of poetry as a novel, as much a symphony as a memoir, this is an extraordinary book from a writer at the top of his powers. Reminiscent of Berger and Calvino, Jeff Talarigo manages to capture the breadth and circumference of story-telling, while also giving us a privileged insight into the daily life and dreams of Gaza." —Colum McCann, Thirteen Ways of Looking In the mode of J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees engages poetic language, mythic themes, and childlike perspectives to offer an original approach to a conflict that has become hardened and polarized. These linked stories of an American’s experience in Gaza expose the seven-decade long Palestinian diaspora in a disquieting allegory of the clash between the occupied and the occupier. In a place where political posturing, bloody war, journalistic witness, and even patient negotiation have yielded so little understanding, we enter the cemetery of the orange trees, where urchins kite dead birds, goats utter wisdom, camels and donkeys huddle together, and merchandise magically passes underground through the tunnels of Gaza. But this is no fairy tale or bestiary. In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees is a waking, attentive dream-journal, leading us back to a place where hatred, strife, and even human language itself might sing. Jeff Talarigo is the author of two novels: The Pearl Diver and The Ginseng Hunter. He has lived in Gaza and Japan, and currently resides in Oakland, California.

In The Cemeteries of New Orleans, Peter B. Dedek reveals the origins and evolution of the Crescent City’s world-famous necropolises, exploring both their distinctive architecture and their cultural impact. Spanning centuries, this fascinating body of research takes readers from muddy fields of crude burial markers to extravagantly designed cities of the dead, illuminating a vital and vulnerable piece of New Orleans’s identity. Where many histories of New Orleans cemeteries have revolved around the famous people buried within them, Dedek focuses on the marble cutters, burial society members, journalists, and tourists who shaped these graveyards into internationally recognizable emblems of the city. In addition to these cultural actors, Dedek’s exploration of cemetery architecture reveals the impact of ancient and medieval grave traditions and styles, the city’s geography, and the arrival of trained European tomb designers, such as the French architect J. N. B. de Pouilly in 1833 and Italian artist and architect Pietro Gualdi in 1851. As Dedek shows, the nineteenth century was a particularly critical era in the city’s cemetery design. Notably, the cemeteries embodied traditional French and Spanish precedents, until the first garden cemetery—the Metairie Cemetery—was built on the site of an old racetrack in 1872. Like the older walled cemeteries, this iconic venue served as a lavish expression of fraternal and ethnic unity, a backdrop to exuberant social celebrations, and a destination for sightseeing excursions. During this time, cultural and religious practices, such as the celebration of All Saints’ Day and the practice of Voodoo rituals, flourished within the spatial bounds of these resting places. Over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, however, episodes of neglect and destruction gave rise to groups that aimed to preserve the historic cemeteries of New Orleans—an endeavor, which, according to Dedek, is still wanting for resources and political will. Containing ample primary source material, abundant illustrations, appendices on both tomb styles and the history of each of the city’s eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cemeteries, The Cemeteries of New Orleans offers a comprehensive and intriguing resource on these fascinating historic sites.

This true crime novel examines the 1932 Lindbergh kidnapping, arguing it was orchestrated by a Bronx deli clerk who got away with the crime scot-free. In this meticulous and authoritative account of the trial and the times of the Lindbergh kidnapping, Robert Zorn clears away decades of ungrounded speculation surrounding the case. Inspired by his father’s relationship with the actual accomplices—including the mastermind—he presents the clearest ever picture of a criminal partnership that would shake every class and culture of American society. Using personal possessions and documents, never-before-seen photographs, new forensic evidence, and extensive research, Robert Zorn has written a shocking and captivating account of the crime and the original “Trial of the Century.” From the ecstatic riots that followed the Spirit of St. Louis on either side of the Atlantic, to the tragic night that would shake America’s sense of security, to the horror of the New Jersey morgue where Lindbergh insisted on verifying the identity of his son, Zorn’s skillful treatment meets this larger-than-life story and gives it definitive shape by revealing the true events behind the crime, for the first time. Praise for Cemetery John “Eighty years after the kidnapping of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s baby from their Englewood, N.J., home, the case still raises questions, ones Zorn ably examines through an unusual lens. . . . Retelling the by now familiar story of Charlie Lindbergh’s kidnapping, Zorn imbues it with novelistic suspense. Even if Zorn doesn’t definitively prove that Knoll, who died in 1980, was the crime’s mastermind and Hauptmann’s accomplice, he makes a strong case.” —Publishers Weekly “Debut author Zorn makes a compelling case that the 1932 Lindbergh kidnapping was orchestrated by a Bronx deli clerk who got away with the crime scot-free. . . . Zorn’s research includes new forensic evidence, personal and historical documents, and interviews, laying the foundation for a thrilling true-crime tale that offers a resounding answer to the question of who was really responsible for the kidnapping.” —Kirkus Reviews