Is the cemetery dead?

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.

This book gets to the heart of the tragedy of death, chronicling how Americans are inventing new or adapting old traditions, burial places, and memorials.