Title: Over My Dead Body
Author: Greg Melville
Publication: October 17, 2023
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
Genre: Non-Fiction
Pages: 272

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SYNOPSIS: (From Goodreads)

The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown, and thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the place told of his town and its history. Thus was born Melville’s lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead.

Melville’s Over My Dead Body is a lively (pun intended) and wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it. Cemeteries have given birth to landscape architecture and famous parks, as well as influenced architectural styles. They’ve inspired and motivated some of our greatest poets and authors—Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson. They’ve been used as political tools to shift the country’s discourse and as important symbols of the United States’ ambition and reach.

But they are changing and fading. Embalming and burial is incredibly toxic, and while cremations have just recently surpassed burials in popularity, they’re not great for the environment either. Over My Dead Body explores everything—history, sustainability, land use, and more—and what it really means to memorialize.

REVIEW:

Honestly, I have no idea where I can across this book.  I am always finding random and new books to read and sometimes my taste in non-fiction books is wild.  However, I will say that I have a thirst for knowledge about the history of cemeteries.  They fascinate me. So when I saw this book I knew I had to read it. 

There really isn’t a story line per say for this book.  The author delves deeper into our burial industry and our cemeteries.  He visits various places around the USA and gives you a brief history about them as well as a deep dive into how certain practices in the death industry came about.  I am more appalled by the 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluid that we put into the ground year than anything else.  That number is honestly staggering and when you think that all of that is going into our water table it is even more so.  I believe it was the Bronte sister that lived down hill from a cemetery and got sick from it all.  Anyway, I digress.  Did you know that there are 144,000 cemeteries in the USA?  A NASA scientist found all of them using satellite imagery from space to find them all.  While that number seems astounding the rate at which the cemeteries are filling is alarming.  This has led to some cemeteries digging up the dead, storing their bones and then reselling the plot to someone else.  

What I find fascinating is how much we are willing to pay for plots and the funeral itself.  In my mind it should not cost upwards of 26,000 dollars for a plot not including the ceremony that goes along with it and the either cremation or the embalming.   He tells of the continuous exile of black cemeteries in the US as well as the desecration of the graves.  He tells of the blatant disregard for the Native American burial sites and how a certain President cut their land and space for their land.  The desecration of graves is horrible, but doing it out of sheer spite is a whole nother level.  There is a special place for people who do that.  Reading this book makes me sad that I didn’t really explore some of the cemeteries that he talked about. I had the perfect time to do it on vacation with my family in Plymouth and just didn’t take the opportunity to do it.  While they were not mentioned I also should have when I was in Salem and all of the ” witch” graves would have been interesting to see and explore.  I have already requested a friend’s mailing address so I can mail her this book. It is a fascinating exploration of the cemeteries in our country.