Kate Sweeney (2) (1978–)

I received an advanced reader’s copy of this book for free on LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review.

This book is very well written, informative, and extremely engaging. The author comes across as a knowledgeable expert, yet down-to-earth. It is the type of book that I would appreciate as a student of a college course, as it is academic without the dryness, monotony, and incomprehensible language that often plague assigned reading. This book takes a difficult topic and approaches show more it in a way that makes it feel more comfortable to study. Prepare to ponder, laugh, cry, and wonder as you embark on the journey of exploring the American customs of mourning. This book is a must read for anyone interested in this topic. show less

Every 14 seconds, some one dies in the United States. But how do we mourn those deaths? How do current mourning practices compare to those of the past? And what do new innovations and practices in the funerary industry have to say about the social landscape of the country? Kate Sweeney’s American Afterlife looks at all these facets of the American funerary, burial, and death services to get a picture of how we deal with the loss of a loved one.

Her book covers many unique aspects of the show more death business, from different methods of burial and remembrance to urn sellers to memorial photographers and more. Sweeney’s book is much like Mary Roach’s Stiff but without any of the humor. Her voyeuristic in-roads into the America death industry are eye-opening but fall a bit short of ground-breaking. The writing is good, but overall, I wanted more, something that address some greater realities about mourning and mourners. If you’re interested in some of the newer aspects of the funerary business, such as turning loved ones into coral reefs or buying your own urn or the legality of roadside memorials, then you’ll get some answers here. For anything else, you’ll have to look elsewhere. show less

This review was written for LibraryThing Member Giveaway

In 2009, Kate Sweeney wrote a Master’s thesis at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. The author has reworked the thesis and published it as American afterlife : encounters in the customs of mourning. She covers early burials (who knew what a cooling board was), cemeteries, funeral homes, roadside memorials, and green burials. She writes of a visit to the now defunct Museum of Funeral Customs, participates in a burial at sea, show more and interviews various people like a tattoo artist, a writer of obituaries, a memorial photographer, and several others. Changing ways of dealing with death are highlighted.

Since this work began as a thesis, it contains endnotes as well as a brief bibliography for further reading. Surprisingly, she does not include Jessica Mitford’s The American way of death in the bibliography, the book that brought the funeral industry into public notice. There are also a few illustrations included, but none on cooling boards. In my advanced reader’s copy, there was no index but one will be included in the final version of the book. It would have come in handy several times. The author was confused about the life of Queen Victoria when she was used as an example of mourning. Her husband was Prince Albert, whom she mourned the rest of her long life, not King Edward who was her eldest son.

Having read several very dry and uninteresting books that began as theses, I expected a densely written academic book. Instead this was an informal and highly interesting book about funeral customs written by a reporter for the NPR station in Atlanta. I can recommend this to anyone with an interest in the subject of mourning customs. show less