funeral rites and ceremonies

Raised on the posh Upper East Side of Manhattan, Elizabeth Meyer stunned her family and friends when she applied for a position at one of New York's most celebrated funeral homes. The 24-year-old college graduate had interned for designers and PR firms. After planning her own father's funeral, Elizabeth realized she could help others celebrate the lives of their loved ones. Elizabeth saw a market for elaborate funerals and she created the demand for her services by planning unusual funerals for movie stars, musicians, and moguls of all kinds.

Death is as old as life itself, and the rituals accompanying it are about as old, too. For thousands of years, cultures around the world have ritualized death as a way of understanding it. Whether it was preserving a body for eternity or disposing of it completely to set the soul free, a culture's funerary customs reveal much about how its people viewed life and death. This text provides an age-appropriate examination of death rituals from cultures both ancient and modern. Captivating sidebars, fact boxes, a graphic organizer, and engaging visuals will encourage readers to look to the past to see how we handle death today.

Crypts, tombs, and mausoleums arent just the creepy props of a horror movie; theyre the final resting places of the dead. Many are also beautifully designed monuments. This intriguing examination of some of the worlds most prominent tombs includes the elaborate Taj Mahal, the mysterious Newgrange, the mammoth Great Pyramid, and the star-studded Westminster Abbey. Modern tombs and burial customs are also discussed in this thoughtful text, accompanied by vivid, striking photographs. Sidebars and fact boxes offer more--sometimes chilling--details about various tombs and burial rites.

When Nora returns to her Mexican village to attend her ex-husband's funeral, she finds herself shaken by her memories of their life together and the ceremony surrounding his death and burial.

Ari Goldman explores the emotional and spiritual aspects of spending a ritual year in mourning, a required Jewish tradition, after his father died.

Depicts the 1945 funeral train of FDR and examines the disparity of its passengers inside including a Soviet spy, a bereaved Eleanor Roosevelt, the Supreme Court justices, and the incoming president, Harry Truman.

Killing a bird with his slingshot as a boy, William Bellman grows up a wealthy family man unaware of how his act of childhood cruelty will have terrible consequences until a wrenching tragedy compels him to enter into a macabre bargain with a stranger in black.

A guide to help the reader in making choices in dealing with death, funeral arrangements, and burial, also includes many of the legal implications.

Body snatching is the act of digging up bodies from graveyards. This creepy practice was at its most prevalent in the 1800s.when doctors paid for bodies so that they could learn about human anatomy. Readers will be amazed by bizarre accounts of famous body snatchers and how they were brought to justice.