Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present by Philippe ArièsMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This little work, really a long essay, is a fascinating overview of burying, dying, and funereal practices in America and Europe from ancient times into the Twentieth Century. The author tracks the dying experience from personal to a gathering of intimates to a sterile, lonely act in a modern hospital. Burying goes from a dispassionate "mystical trust" into graves which are readily exhumed for re-use, filling the charnel houses, which graves become more personal and pushed in on churches until pushed out of even the city.
The implications of the rise of embalming and plots reserved indefinitely... Fascinating, thought-provoking.
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