
Digging Up the Dead
A History of Notable American Reburials
Michael Kammen(Author)
University of Chicago Press
Published on 15. April 2011
Book
Paperback/Softback
272 pages
978-0-226-42330-2 (ISBN)
Description
With "Digging Up the Dead", Pulitzer Prize - winning historian Michael Kammen reveals a treasure trove of fascinating, surprising, and occasionally gruesome stories of exhumation and reburial throughout American history. Taking us to the contested grave sites of such figures as Sitting Bull, John Paul Jones, Frank Lloyd Wright, Daniel Boone, Jefferson Davis, and even Abraham Lincoln, Kammen explores how complicated interactions of regional pride, shifting reputations, and evolving burial practices led to public and often emotional battles over the final resting places of famous figures. Grave-robbing, skull-fondling, cases of mistaken identity, and the financial lures of cemetery tourism all come into play as Kammen delves deeply into this little-known - yet surprisingly persistent - aspect of American history. Simultaneously insightful and interesting, masterly and macabre, "Digging Up the Dead" reminds us that the stories of American history don't always end when the key players pass on. Rather, the battle - over reputations, interpretations, and, last but far from least, possession of the remains themselves - is often just beginning.
Reviews / Votes
"Kammen has a good sense of the details that make historical stories memorable. His occasional flashes of humor add a winsome, professionally geeky element to the telling." (Dallas Morning News) "The entertaining, if not macabre premise of Michael Kammen's new book is to explore how fluid final resting places may be.... As his drily witty book proves, fluctuating reputations and warring families have all played their part in ensuring that for the famous and infamous alike, there's no such thing as resting in peace." (Daily Telegraph) "This slender page-turner is a work of fact, a comprehensively researched work on a ghoulish and wonderfully weird subject: exhumation." (San Francisco Chronicle) "Kammen effectively captures the eternal dual fascination with greatness and with the dead, and the power of their conjunction in the burial of heroes." (Publishers Weekly)"More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 23 mm
Width: 15 mm
Thickness: 2 mm
Weight
425 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-42330-2 (9780226423302)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
05/2010
1st Edition
University of Chicago Press
€24.49
Available for download
Person
Michael Kammen is the Newton C. Farr Professor Emeritus of American History and Culture at Cornell University. He is the author of many books, including Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture, and the Pulitzer Prize - winning People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization.