With "Digging Up the Dead", Pulitzer Prize - winning historian Michael Kammen reveals a treasure trove of fascinating, surprising, and occasionally gruesome stories of exhumation and reburial throughout American history. Taking us to the contested grave sites of such figures as Sitting Bull, John Paul Jones, Frank Lloyd Wright, Daniel Boone, Jefferson Davis, and even Abraham Lincoln, Kammen explores how complicated interactions of regional pride, shifting reputations, and evolving burial practices led to public and often emotional battles over the final resting places of famous figures. Grave-robbing, skull-fondling, cases of mistaken identity, and the financial lures of cemetery tourism all come into play as Kammen delves deeply into this little-known - yet surprisingly persistent - aspect of American history. Simultaneously insightful and interesting, masterly and macabre, "Digging Up the Dead" reminds us that the stories of American history don't always end when the key players pass on. Rather, the battle - over reputations, interpretations, and, last but far from least, possession of the remains themselves - is often just beginning.

About the Author
Michael Kammen is the Newton C. Farr Professor Emeritus of American History and Culture at Cornell University. He is the author of many books, including Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture, and the Pulitzer Prize - winning People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization.

Reviews
"Kammen has a good sense of the details that make historical stories memorable. His occasional flashes of humor add a winsome, professionally geeky element to the telling." (Dallas Morning News) "The entertaining, if not macabre premise of Michael Kammen's new book is to explore how fluid final resting places may be.... As his drily witty book proves, fluctuating reputations and warring families have all played their part in ensuring that for the famous and infamous alike, there's no such thing as resting in peace." (Daily Telegraph) "This slender page-turner is a work of fact, a comprehensively researched work on a ghoulish and wonderfully weird subject: exhumation." (San Francisco Chronicle) "Kammen effectively captures the eternal dual fascination with greatness and with the dead, and the power of their conjunction in the burial of heroes." (Publishers Weekly)"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226423302
Author Michael Kammen
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 425g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 15mm * 2mm