Many of our AGS members are avid readers. If you are one of them, we hope you’ll join us on the third Sunday of each month for the AGS Book Club. Each month we'll focus on a book about cemeteries, gravestones, mourning customs, funerary practices and death & dying. We hope to include books written by AGS members, classics in our field, newly published books, as well as fiction that feature the subjects mentioned above.
Where: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85194021152?pwd=aG9rU2tFdDM1TG1ac2hYei9yTmc1Zz09
Our selection for May 2024: The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford
Only the scathing wit and searching intelligence of Jessica Mitford could turn an exposé of the American funeral industry into a book that is at once deadly serious and side-splittingly funny. When first published in 1963, this landmark of investigative journalism became a runaway bestseller and resulted in legislation to protect grieving families from the unscrupulous sales practices of those in "the dismal trade." Just before her death in 1996, Mitford thoroughly revised and updated her classic study. The American Way of Death Revisited confronts new trends, including the success of the profession's lobbyists in Washington, inflated cremation costs, the telemarketing of pay-in-advance graves, and the effects of monopolies in a death-care industry now dominated by multinational corporations. With its hard-nosed consumer activism and a satiric vision out of Evelyn Waugh's novel The Loved One, The American Way of Death Revisited will not fail to inform, delight, and disturb.
Looking forward to seeing you in May!
Your hosts: Alma Sinan and Ashlynn Rickord Werner
PO Box 2975 | Amherst, MA 01004 | 413.772.0836 The Association for Gravestone Studies is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Copyright 2024
