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Author: Jessica Mitford Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0307809390 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
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. "Brilliant--hilarious. . . . A must-read for anyone planning to throw a funeral in their lifetime."--New York Post "Witty and penetrating--it speaks the truth."--The Washington Post
Author: Jessica Mitford Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0307809390 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
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. "Brilliant--hilarious. . . . A must-read for anyone planning to throw a funeral in their lifetime."--New York Post "Witty and penetrating--it speaks the truth."--The Washington Post
Author: Jessica Mitford Publisher: Knopf ISBN: 0307565661 Category : Literary Collections Languages : en Pages : 770
Book Description
“Decca” Mitford lived a larger-than-life life: born into the British aristocracy—one of the famous (and sometimes infamous) Mitford sisters—she ran away to Spain during the Spanish Civil War with her cousin Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchill’s nephew, then came to America, became a tireless political activist and a member of the Communist Party, and embarked on a brilliant career as a memoirist and muckraking journalist (her funeral-industry exposé, The American Way of Death, became an instant classic). She was a celebrated wit, a charmer, and throughout her life a prolific and passionate writer of letters—now gathered here. Decca’s correspondence crackles with irreverent humor and mischief, and with acute insight into human behavior (and misbehavior) that attests to her generous experience of the worlds of politics, the arts, journalism, publishing, and high and low society. Here is correspondence with everyone from Katharine Graham and George Jackson, Betty Friedan, Miss Manners, Julie Andrews, Maya Angelou, Harry Truman, and Hillary Rodham Clinton to Decca’s sisters the Duchess of Devonshire and the novelist Nancy Mitford, her parents, her husbands, her children, and her grandchildren. In a profile of J.K. Rowling, The Daily Telegraph (UK), said, “Her favorite drink is gin and tonic, her least favorite food, trip. Her heroine is Jessica Mitford.”
Author: Jessica Mitford Publisher: Plume Books ISBN: 9780452270688 Category : Health & Fitness Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
Traces the history of childbirth in America and assesses the conventional and alternative methods of childbirth, commenting on the state of American childbirth and health care. By the author of The American Way of Death. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.
Author: Robert Webster Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc. ISBN: 1402250843 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 249
Book Description
Why would someone want to hang out with dead bodies? With curious anecdotes and unbelievable truth, funeral director Robert Webster reveals that answer and more, offering readers entertaining and quirky stories gleaned from a life lived around death. Webster tackles those embarrassing questions we all have about what really goes on bhind the scenes when you've left this world: Strange things people put in caskets The biggest rip-offs in the business The crazy things that happen to a body after death Lime, waz, and other ways to hide the truth The most important thing an undertaker does How to avoid the high-pressure funeral parlor What that's not a coffin the body is resting in
Author: Everest Media, Publisher: Everest Media LLC ISBN: Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 53
Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The funeral industry is a sales industry, and the funeral directors are the salesmen. They long to be liked and understood, and they want to be worthy of high regard. They are preying on the grief, remorse, and guilt of survivors, or they are trained professionals with high ethical standards. #2 The funeral industry is suffering from a lack of image and identity. To solve this, Dakota Tom recommends that funeral directors and suppliers produce fifteen- to thirty-second commercials which affirms the personality of the industry. #3 The American Way of Death was a best-seller, and funeral service went on a diet from which it never recovered. Enoch Glascock, who had worked in mortuary school, explained that funeral homes should do something positive about themselves. #4 There are many ways to gain name recognition and patronage. One method is to give turkeys at Thanksgiving and Christmas to deserving families, which allows everyone to participate.
Author: Christine Quigley Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 147661377X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 369
Book Description
Throughout the centuries, different cultures have established a variety of procedures for handling and disposing of corpses. Often the methods are directly associated with the deceased's position in life, such as a pharaoh's mummification in Egypt or the cremation of a Buddhist. Treatment by the living of the dead over time and across cultures is the focus of this study. Burial arrangements and preparations are detailed, including embalming, the funeral service, storage and transport of the body, and forms of burial. Autopsies and the investigative process of causes of deliberate death are fully covered. Preservation techniques such as cryonic suspension and mummification are discussed, as well as a look at the "recycling" of the corpse through organ donation, donation to medicine, animal scavengers, cannibalism, and, of course, natural decay and decomposition. Mistreatments of a corpse are also covered.
Author: Eric Layer Publisher: ISBN: 9781735610924 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
Funeral service is dying. Cremation rates are sky-high, new competitors pop up every day, and an entire generation of funeral home owners are considering closing shop. But a thriving future is still possible. Eric Layer paints a vivid picture of what's threatening death care and everything mortuary owners need to know about how to save it.
Author: Evelyn Waugh Publisher: Hachette+ORM ISBN: 0316216488 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 111
Book Description
"A work of art as rich and subtle and unnerving as anything its author has ever done" (New Yorker), The Loved One is Evelyn Waugh's cutting satire of 1940s California and the Anglo-American cultural divide. Following the death of a friend, the poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday--and Dennis gets drawn into a bizarre love triangle with Aimée Thanatogenos, a naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr. Joyboy, a master of the embalmer's art. Waugh's dark and savage satire depicts a world where reputation, love, and death cost a very great deal.
Author: Zygmunt Bauman Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 0745656668 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 361
Book Description
Zygmunt Bauman's new book is a brilliant exploration, from a sociological point of view, of the 'taboo' subject in modern societies: death and dying. The book develops a new theory of the ways in which human mortality is reacted to, and dealt with, in social institutions and culture. The hypothesis explored in the book is that the necessity of human beings to live with the constant awareness of death accounts for crucial aspects of the social organization of all known societies. Two different 'life strategies' are distinguished in respect of reactions to mortality. One, 'the modern strategy', deconstructs mortality by translating the insoluble issue of death into many specific problems of health and disease which are 'soluble in principle'. The 'post-modern strategy' is one of deconstructing immortality: life is transformed into a constant rehearsal of 'reversible death', a substitution of 'temporary disappearance' for the irrevocable termination of life. This profound and provocative book will appeal to a wide audience. It will also be of particular interest to students and professionals in the areas of sociology, anthropology, theology and philosophy.
Author: Jessica Mitford Publisher: New York Review of Books ISBN: 1590173554 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 290
Book Description
Jessica Mitford was a member of one of England’s most legendary families (among her sisters were the novelist Nancy Mitford and the current Duchess of Devonshire) and one of the great muckraking journalists of modern times. Leaving England for America, she pursued a career as an investigative reporter and unrepentant gadfly, publicizing not only the misdeeds of, most famously, the funeral business (The American Way of Death, a bestseller) and the prison business (Kind and Usual Punishment), but also of writing schools and weight-loss programs. Mitford’s diligence, unfailing skepticism, and acid pen made her one of the great chroniclers of the mischief people get up to in the pursuit of profit and the name of good. Poison Penmanship collects seventeen of Mitford’s finest pieces—about everything from crummy spas to network-TV censorship—and fills them out with the story of how she got the scoop and, no less fascinating, how the story developed after publication. The book is a delight to read: few journalists have ever been as funny as Mitford, or as gifted at getting around in those dark, cobwebbed corners where modern America fashions its shiny promises. It’s also an unequaled and necessary manual of the fine art of investigative reporting.
Author: Jessica Mitford
Author: Jessica Mitford
Author: Jessica Mitford
Author: Jessica Mitford
Author: Robert Webster
Author: Everest Media,
Author: Christine Quigley
Author: Eric Layer
Author: Evelyn Waugh
Author: Zygmunt Bauman
Author: Jessica Mitford