Link: Over My Dead Body
There are over 144,000 cemeteries in the United States, according to author Greg Melville, and he’s visited a lot of them and cataloged some of his visits in Over My Dead Body. ALthough some books about cemeteries are staid recitations of who is buried where, Melville works to make his book entertaining and to provide not only facts by social commentary.
He starts with a visit to Jamestown and recounts the tragic history of the town including how there is evidence that people desperate for food canibalized the dead. Melville also contrasts the hastily created mass graves of the European invaders with the elaborate and well planned burials of the Native Alquonqin people.
Melville’s balanced look at the graves of the European conquers with the people they abused and took advantage of, including Native Americans and Africans, continues as he moves on to Plymouth where he details how the English robbed corn from the graves of the Wampanoag people. He also compares how rich slave owners, such as Thomas Jefferson, have elaborate memorials while the bodies of the enslaved are hidden.
Melville’s book is not only full of civics lessons, it also details how cemeteries evolved and greew over the centuries going from small family or church yard plots to elaborate parks full of tree lined boulevards. He concludes his look at America’s cemetaries by looking to the future and examining columbariums where the urns of the deceased are memoralized and green cemeteries.
This book is a fun read and it packs a lot of history within its pages. Highly recommended for anyone who is fascinated by death and cemetaries.