Preserved: A Cultural History of the Funeral Home

I have never thought of funeral directors as the preservationists of Gilded Age architecture, but they are. Thanks to Dr. Dean Lampros's cross-disciplinary research on the cultural history of these residential funeral parlours we see the remnants of the Gilded Age in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Dean joins me to discuss his new book, and the amazing research he has compiled. Essential Reading: Dean Lampros, Preserved: A Cultural History of the Funeral Home in America (2024). Recommended Reading: Jessica Mitford, The American Way of Death (1963). Stephen Prothero, Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America (2002). Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2004). Gary Laderman, Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America (2005). Marilyn Yalom, The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds (2008). Suzanne Smith, To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death (2010). Michael Rosenow, Death and Dying in the Working Class, 1865 – 1920 (2015). Caitlin Doughty, From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death (2018).