The subject of death is treated as an aspect of cultural history, which includes the ideas about God, sin, death, and damnation imparted to children in Puritan New England; nineteenth-century America's grim acceptance of, if not relish for, death; consolation literature in the nineteenth century; the "rural cemetery" movement; and death in Mormon and Mexican societies.

Contributors: Philippe Ariès, Ann Douglas, Stanley French, Jack Goody, Patricia Fernández Kelly, Mary Ann Meyers, Lewis O. Saum, David E. Stannard.