Book: ‘Cemeteries’

It was the Puritans who finally killed the pre-Reformation European habit of hosting social events inside cemeteries. But that didn’t stop American colonists from letting their livestock munch on the nutrient-rich graveyard grass, or keep rural cemeteries free of 19th-century tourists. Even today, visitors flock to the gravesites of national icons, or wander through signature meandering paths and manicured greenery to visit loved ones. In Cemeteries, Keith Eggener, professor of American art and architecture at the University of Missouri, contends that the necropolis is designed as much for the living as it is a memorial for the dead. His narrative uses more than 600 archival photographs and drawings of cemeteries and public memorials to animate the history of American memorial architecture–including the historical form and function of churchyards, municipal, denominational and membership-based cemeteries, military cemeteries, Native American burial grounds, funeral processions, and burial procedures for excluded communities. • $75; Norton Professional Books, December 2010