Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America's Cemeteries

by Greg Melville

Overview

An “astonishing . . . fascinating . . . powerful” (New York Times Book Review) tour through the history of US cemeteries that explores how, where, and why we bury our dead

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 also have 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.
Locales visited in Over My Dead Body
Shawsheen Cemetery – Bedford, Massachusetts
The 1607 Burial Ground – Historic Jamestowne, Virginia
Burial Hill – Plymouth, Massachusetts
Colonial Jewish Burial Ground – Newport, Rhode Island
Monticello’s African American Graveyard – Charlottesville, Virginia
Mount Auburn Cemetery – Cambridge, Massachusetts
Green-Wood Cemetery – Brooklyn, New York
Laurel Grove Cemetery – Savannah, Georgia
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery – Concord, Massachusetts
Central Park – New York, New York
Gettysburg National Cemetery – Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Arlington National Cemetery – Arlington, Virginia
Woodlawn Cemetery – Bronx, New York
Boothill Graveyard – Tombhill, Arizona
Forest Lawn Memorial-Park – Glenwood, California
The Chapel of the Chimes – Oakland, California
Hollywood Forever Cemetery – Los Angeles, California
Nature’s Sanctuary – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781419754869
Publisher:	Abrams Press
Publication date:	10/17/2023
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Greg Melville has worked as an outdoor journalist and a former editor at Men’s Journal and Hearst magazines. He has strong connections with magazines and newspapers, and his writing has appeared in Outside, National Geographic Traveler, Men’s Health, and the Boston Globe Magazine. His work was also listed in The Best American Sportswriting 2017. He is a decorated veteran who served in Afghanistan and is in the Navy Reserve, where he is a Public Affairs Officer, with the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He has taught English and writing at the United States Naval Academy, where he was given the school’s instructor of the year award in 2019, and journalism at St. Michael’s College in Vermont. He lives with his wife and two kids in Delaware.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

1 Cannibals, A Coffin, and a Captain's Staff 9

Colonial Jamestown's original graves reveal America's distinctly uncivilized beginnings

2 Pilgrim's Progress? 23

To trace America's long, ongoing history of desecrating the Native dead, start at Plymouth Rock

3 … Or Give Me Death 37

Jewish cemeteries are America's first and most enduring public expressions of religious liberty-which makes them targets for intolerance

4 Where the Bodies are Buried 45

Southern plantation owners concealed the evidence of their moral crimes by hiding the bones of the enslaved

5 Out of the Churchyard, Into the Woods 59

Rural-style cemeteries transformed America's landscape, turning burial grounds into tree-filled tourist destinations

6 Underground Art 73

The Brooklyn cemetery that turned New York into America's cultural capital

7 Death Comes Equally to us All 87

Racial segregation in American cemeteries is still very much alive

8 The Tonic of Wildness 99

How Emerson and Thoreau turned a new cemetery into the country's first conservation project

9 A Cemetery by any other Name 107

Central Park, built on burial grounds, has become Manhattan's most active repository for human remains

10 Four Score and Seventy-Nine Years Ago 117

The Civil War opened the gates to the capitalism of corpses-and death in America has never been the same

11 Sweet and Fitting to Die for One's Country 129

How Arlington National Cemetery's success as a monument to war made Americans too eager to fill it

12 Keeping up with the Corpses 147

The way cemeteries set the mold for America's suburban subdivisions

13 Lasting Impressions 163

Tombstones in old boot hill graveyards keep alive the lost story of Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth-century American West

14 The Disneyland of Graveyards 175

How a Los Angeles cemetery corporatized mourning in America

15 We Didn't Start the Fire 189

Cremation now outnumbers burials in America and has surprisingly led some dying cemeteries to rise from the ashes

16 Leveraging Buried Assets 205

Facing an existential threat from Digital Immortality, cemeteries are staging a gritty fight for survival

17 Back to Nature 219

Green cemeteries return America's burial practices to the country's earliest days

Epilogue 227

Acknowledgments 231

Bibliography 233

Photograph Credits 257

About the Author 259

Editorial Reviews

Greg Melville is a graveyard connoisseur. In Over My Dead Body, he drags his wry wife and patient kids through rural cemeteries, garden burial grounds, and locked churchyards—not to mention bone vaults and the continent’s busiest city park—while he strips away myths and unearths buried sins, exploring cycles of fashion and need in the American history of mourning.

JUDY MELINEK & T.J. MITCHELL

[A] fascinating examination of how we treat, and mistreat, our dead . . . Melville has researched, reported and written a powerful book that not only summons us to embrace equitable treatment of all Americans in death but also in life.

Associated Press

Greg Melville has written a wonderful book about a fascinating piece of Americana that has, for too long, needed a disinterment. Over My Dead Body is, at various times, haunting, thoughtful, and laugh-out-loud hilarious, and is so chock-full of informative ‘who knew?’ moments that the pages almost seem to turn themselves.

New York Times bestselling author of Saban and Lor MONTE BURKE

Witty, warm, and bristling with fascinating history and firsthand details, this book about the places where our bodies return to the earth is essential—no, vital—reading.

New York Times bestselling author of On Trails: ROBERT MOOR

You hold in your hands a treasure map, a gentle, sly, and poignant presence leading us to places in America and in our lives that have been hiding in plain sight. This tale is about cemeteries, but it’s really about how beautiful is life. We go forward living well by being aware how and where life ends up, so to speak—that’s the amazing, enlightening journey of this book. If you love Ian Frazier, Bill Bryson, or Caroline Alexander, this one’s for you.

#1 New York Times bestselling author of 12 Strong DOUG STANTON

07/11/2022

This entertaining and illuminating history chronicles the evolution of burial practices in the U.S. Documenting the influence of overseas mortuary innovations and shifts in social, religious, and cultural customs, journalist Melville (Greasy Rider) describes the grim early boneyards of colonial Jamestown and Plymouth; the emergence of landscaped garden cemeteries such as Cambridge, Mass.’s Mount Auburn in the mid-19th century; the post–Civil War rise of military cemeteries; the advent of opulent suburban cemeteries; and the 1917 innovation of the lawn-park design—in which grave markers are embedded flat in the ground—at Glendale, Calif.’s Forest Lawn Memorial-Park, which “probably contains more stars per square foot than any zip code in Los Angeles.” Mortuary practices continue to evolve, according to Melville, who notes an increase in cremations over the past two decades, as well as recent booms in digital cemeteries and environmentally friendly green burials. He also details repeated desecrations of Native American burial grounds, ongoing racial and religious segregation in American cemeteries, and how the “Death Industrial Complex” exploits grieving families. Throughout, Melville’s wry humor enlivens discussions of arcane yet intriguing historical figures and archaeological discoveries. This colorful study fascinates. Photos. Agent: Lindsay Edgecombe, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

It is this same appreciation for the dead, as well as for history, that drives journalist Greg Melville as he explores America’s cemeteries in Over My Dead Body . . . all with a perfect balance of geeky joy, deep reverence and a meticulous knack for research. Melville’s prose is pure pleasure mixed with wry asides, but even among his most amusing anecdotes, he never loses sight of the gravity that still vibrates through the stories of the dead."

Bookpage

This revelatory book about the places we bury our dead brims with life–from body snatchers to racist policies, religious rituals to digital immortalization. I couldn't put it down.

ALLISON HOOVER BARTLETT

Astonishing. . . fascinating . . . powerful . . .Focusing on these particular physical places enables Melville to change how we think about the past, making it a more complete and honest telling . . . This clever, sensitive book gives us a new way to think about death, not as the final chapter, but as a window onto life in America.”

New York Times Book Review

Melville is an ideal guide, carrying a revealing lantern into both beautiful and disturbing corners of the nation’s undervalued graveyards. At the end of a glorious excursion, he leaves you with a deep appreciation of the rich heritage sleeping just under Americans’ feet. Captivating.

New York Times bestselling author of The Facemaker DR. LINDSEY FITZHARRIS

Author Greg Melville is a great tour-guide as he takes readers on a wide-eyed journey through history of both America and American death. Each of the cemeteries he profiles in his book is different and remarkable, borderline creepy, not gruesome but unusual enough to hold your interest as Melville explains why he chose each cemetery to study before he takes a few side-paths . . .”

Goshen News

If every graveyard is a library of compact life stories, this essential book is the grand, sweeping history of American burials: their humble beginnings, surprising (and often controversial) heyday, and questionable future. Greg Melville comes to the subject firsthand and writes with infectious enthusiasm, deep respect, and a healthy dose of wit. You'll dig it.

New York Times bestselling author of Turn Right at MARK ADAMS

Astonishing. . . fascinating . . . powerful . . .Focusing on these particular physical places enables Melville to change how we think about the past, making it a more complete and honest telling . . . This clever, sensitive book gives us a new way to think about death, not as the final chapter, but as a window onto life in America.”
—New York Times Book Review

“[A] fascinating examination of how we treat, and mistreat, our dead . . . Melville has researched, reported and written a powerful book that not only summons us to embrace equitable treatment of all Americans in death but also in life.”—Associated Press

“Entertaining and illuminating . . . Melville’s wry humor enlivens discussions of arcane yet intriguing historical figures and archaeological discoveries. This colorful study fascinates.”
—Publishers Weekly

“It is this same appreciation for the dead, as well as for history, that drives journalist Greg Melville as he explores America’s cemeteries in Over My Dead Body . . . all with a perfect balance of geeky joy, deep reverence and a meticulous knack for research. Melville’s prose is pure pleasure mixed with wry asides, but even among his most amusing anecdotes, he never loses sight of the gravity that still vibrates through the stories of the dead."

—Bookpage

“You hold in your hands a treasure map, a gentle, sly, and poignant presence leading us to places in America and in our lives that have been hiding in plain sight. This tale is about cemeteries, but it’s really about how beautiful is life. We go forward living well by being aware how and where life ends up, so to speak—that’s the amazing, enlightening journey of this book. If you love Ian Frazier, Bill Bryson, or Caroline Alexander, this one’s for you.”—DOUG STANTON, #1 New York Times bestselling author of 12 Strong

“Melville is an ideal guide, carrying a revealing lantern into both beautiful and disturbing corners of the nation’s undervalued graveyards. At the end of a glorious excursion, he leaves you with a deep appreciation of the rich heritage sleeping just under Americans’ feet. Captivating.”—DR. LINDSEY FITZHARRIS, New York Times bestselling author of The Facemaker

“Greg Melville is a graveyard connoisseur. In Over My Dead Body, he drags his wry wife and patient kids through rural cemeteries, garden burial grounds, and locked churchyards—not to mention bone vaults and the continent’s busiest city park—while he strips away myths and unearths buried sins, exploring cycles of fashion and need in the American history of mourning.”—JUDY MELINEK & T.J. MITCHELL, New York Times bestselling authors of Working Stiff, First Cut, and Af

“If every graveyard is a library of compact life stories, this essential book is the grand, sweeping history of American burials: their humble beginnings, surprising (and often controversial) heyday, and questionable future. Greg Melville comes to the subject firsthand and writes with infectious enthusiasm, deep respect, and a healthy dose of wit. You'll dig it.”—MARK ADAMS, New York Times bestselling author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu

“Witty, warm, and bristling with fascinating history and firsthand details, this book about the places where our bodies return to the earth is essential—no, vital—reading.”—ROBERT MOOR, New York Times bestselling author of On Trails: An Exploration

“Greg Melville has written a wonderful book about a fascinating piece of Americana that has, for too long, needed a disinterment. Over My Dead Body is, at various times, haunting, thoughtful, and laugh-out-loud hilarious, and is so chock-full of informative ‘who knew?’ moments that the pages almost seem to turn themselves.”—MONTE BURKE, New York Times bestselling author of Saban and Lords of the Fly

This revelatory book about the places we bury our dead brims with life–from body snatchers to racist policies, religious rituals to digital immortalization. I couldn't put it down.—ALLISON HOOVER BARTLETT, author of The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a De

“Author Greg Melville is a great tour-guide as he takes readers on a wide-eyed journey through history of both America and American death. Each of the cemeteries he profiles in his book is different and remarkable, borderline creepy, not gruesome but unusual enough to hold your interest as Melville explains why he chose each cemetery to study before he takes a few side-paths . . .”
—Goshen News

From the Publisher

Melville is an ideal guide, carrying a revealing lantern into both beautiful and disturbing corners of the nation’s undervalued graveyards. At the end of a glorious excursion, he leaves you with a deep appreciation of the rich heritage sleeping just under Americans’ feet. Captivating.

bestselling author of The Butchering Art DR. LINDSEY FITZHARRIS