Ocean State Libraries

An illuminating study of the American struggle to comprehend the meaning and practicalities of death in the face of the unprecedented carnage of the Civil War. During the war, approximately 620,000 soldiers lost their lives. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be six million. This book explores the impact of this enormous death toll from every angle: material, political, intellectual, and spiritual. Historian Faust delineates the...

A history of American ideas about life and death from before the cradle to beyond the grave.

Using the multiple meanings of "wake" to illustrate the ways Black lives are determined by slavery's afterlives, Christina Sharpe weaves personal experiences with readings of literary and artistic representations of Black life and death to examine what survives in the face of insistent violence and the possibilities for resistance.

Compellingly and compassionately written, it is based on more than six years of firsthand research and reporting by a leading investigative journalist. It brings fully to life the medical, legal, and ethical controversies that surround end-of-life care, showing exactly how they affect individuals and families.

"An intimate, deeply moving investigation of an underreported phenomenon--the rising number of unclaimed dead in America today--and what it says about the state of our society. For centuries, people who died destitute or alone were buried in potters' fields--a Dickensian end that even the most hard-pressed families tried to avoid. Today, more and more relatives are abandoning their dead, leaving it to local governments to dispose of the bodies. Up...