Revolutions in Sorrow

American Death Experience and Policy in Global Context
2007

Huge changes have occurred in both the physical facts of death and in the cultural modes that guide our reactions to it. These changes also affect policy issues ranging from punishments for crimes to birth control to the conduct of war. This book explores the impacts of these changes upon both personal experience and social policy and places developments in the Unites States in an international comparative context.

The book provides an overview of:

• Traditional patterns of death and related cultural practices in agricultural civilizations, along with changes brought about by Christianity
• Colonial American attitudes and practices, compared to other societies
• Changes that occurred in the 19th Century, including new cultural reactions to death; the unprecedented reduction later in the century of infant mortality; the relocation of death from home to hospital; and the redefinition of death as a taboo subject.
• The relationship between changes in death culture and experience to contention debates of the 20th Century over the death penalty; abortion; and war.