Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History of Burial
    Unavailable
    Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History of Burial
    Unavailable
    Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History of Burial
    Ebook282 pages2 hours

    Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History of Burial

    By Penny Colman

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Drawing on extensive historical and anthropological research, personal accounts, and interviews with people who work in the funeral industry, Penny Colman examines the compelling subjects of death and burial across cultures and societies. The text, enriched with stories both humorous and poignant, includes details about the decomposition and embalming processes (an adult corpse buried six feet deep without a coffin will usually take five to ten years to turn into a skeleton) and describes the various customs associated with containing remains (the Igala people in Nigeria have a custom of burying people in as many as twenty-seven layers of clothing). Intriguing facts are revealed at every turn; for example, in Madagascar winter was considered the corpse-turning season.

    This comprehensive book also includes a list of burial sites of famous people, images in the arts associated with death, fascinating epitaphs and gravestone carvings, a chronology and a glossary, and over a hundred black-and-white photographs, most of which were taken by the author.

    Penny Colman writes with compassion and intelligence and humanizes the difficult subjects of death and burial. The result is a powerful look at an inevitable part of life--death.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateDec 15, 1997
    ISBN9781466801356
    Unavailable
    Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History of Burial
    Author

    Penny Colman

    Penny Colman is the author of many nonfiction books, including Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts, Elizabeth Cady and Susan B. Anthony, and Rosie the Riveter. She lives in Englewood, New Jersey.

    Read more from Penny Colman

    Related to Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts

    Related ebooks

    Children's Social Themes For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      On Writerly Jealousy

      Dec 5, 2018

      On Writerly Jealousy
      7 min read

    • Article

      To Eat Your Own Children

      Nov 5, 2020

      To Eat Your Own Children
      5 min read

    • Article

      Becoming a Professional

      Nov 2, 2020

      When my sister’s friend lent me her copy of Writer’s Digest magazine, I studied it as though trying to pass the bar. I’d been writing for years and craved to be published. It was the summer of ’66, and I was 14 and clueless. In the boonies where I li

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Moth Shall Rise Again

      Aug 13, 2020

      The Moth Shall Rise Again
      2 min read

    • Article

      Pictures of Death

      Jul 19, 2017

      Pictures of Death
      6 min read

    • Article

      Daring to Show My Dark Side

      Feb 12, 2024

      Daring to Show My Dark Side
      4 min read

    • Article

      Lauren Oyler And Patricia Lockwood On Their ‘Evil Twin’ Internet Novels

      Feb 8, 2021

      I hate it here. Everyone agrees that “here” sucks. We are miserable and unproductive and lonely all at once. Time goes fast but not in the way that it flies when you’re having fun, more like when you wake up after a nap to find that it’s suddenly dar

      7 min read

    • Article

      Christmas Can Be Murder

      Dec 1, 2022

      Christmas Can Be Murder
      3 min read

    • Article

      An Aneurism of Axe Murders: On ‘The Man from the Train’

      Oct 9, 2017

      You can’t help but read these murders as a parable of alienation. The lone drifter stalking the country by train, itself a mode of transport from a bygone era, to literally smash apart families with an instrument that evoked America’s timbered fronti

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: T Kira Madden

      Dec 13, 2019

      I let go of any book that lacked sincerity in 2019; I plan to maintain that rule. Still, I’ve never in my life felt more grateful to return to words at the beginning or end of my days. The post A Year in Reading: T Kira Madden appeared first on The M

      3 min read

    • Article

      Classifieds

      Aug 18, 2021

      ATTENTION MFA students! Looking for smart, generous acquiring editors who want to publish your most interesting and therefore coolest short story? If so, check us out: www.coolestamericanstories.com. Our inaugural volume, full of well-written, stunni

      27 min read

    • Article

      How LA Author Ben Loory Came to Write His Heartbreaking Fables

      Sep 6, 2017

      LOS ANGELES _ There was a time when Ben Loory lived at night. That's how he puts it, as if night isn't a stretch of empty hours to endure, but a place to enter, to discover whole worlds inside. After dark, the grocery stores are empty and the streets

      4 min read

    • Article

      Prologue

      Dec 18, 2021

      Prologue
      1 min read

    • Article

      You Hunt With The Beaver?

      May 12, 2021

      You Hunt With The Beaver?
      4 min read

    • Article

      Why Horror Films Are More Popular Than Ever

      Jan 13, 2021

      2020 was a bad year for just about everything—except horror. Horror films were wildly popular on streaming platforms over the past year, and 2020 saw the horror genre take home its largest share of the box office in modern history.1 In a year where t

      7 min read

    • Article

      They Grieve Like Us

      Aug 24, 2018

      They Grieve Like Us
      3 min read

    • Article

      More Researched Memoirs To Explore

      Jul 9, 2022

      American Gypsy: a Memoir BY OKSANA MARAFIOTI The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South BY MICHAEL W. TWITTY Flying Free: My Victory Over Fear to Become the First Latina Pilot on the US Aerobatic Team BY CE

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Lupine Anxieties of ‘Wolfish’

      Mar 3, 2023

      It is 1910 in Vienna and, lying prone on Sigmund Freud’s couch, Russian emigré and psychoanalytic patient Sergei Pankejeff—better known to literary posterity as, simply, “The Wolf Man”—describes a troubling nightmare. In the dream, Sergei is sleeping

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts

    3.5/5

    2 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Well-researched, in-depth, and fascinating. This author takes on the challenges to shine light on the darkest of topics. The book is well organized and thoroughly researched. Includes an index, timeline, lists of interesting fact, glossary, and extensive bibliography at the end of the book. Excellent book for research projects or to be used as a teaching resource as it includes various religious and cultural traditions and rituals.