From Publishers Weekly
One in every five Americans is cremated, and the ratio is expected to peak at 50% or 60% in the next century. Funeral directors whose mainstay is traditional burial have responded to this economic threat by attempting to get people to spend more on cremation?whether on crematable caskets, urn vaults, quick-burning incineration or elaborate pre-cremation funeral ceremonies. Furthermore, the insurance and funeral industries have teamed up to create a multibillion-dollar pay-before-you-die business of "pre-need contracts," with millions of people paying for their funerals and settling the details beforehand. In an unflinching, enlightening survey of the "death care industry," Cronin, an editor and writer for American Funeral Director and American Cemetery, defends morticians, casket makers and their ilk against charges of zealous profiteering. Most funeral and cemetery professionals are compassionate and fair, he maintains, adding that even their seemingly blatantly commercialized options cater to a societal need to provide a respectful farewell to loved ones. He closes with a sympathetic look at the nascent "natural death movement," which encourages people to tend to the dead themselves rather than pass the responsibility on to a funeral director.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
Grave Exodus focuses on the growing trend of cremation to examine the bizarre practices and unusual beliefs of Americans when it comes to saying goodbye to loved ones. Grave Exodus looks at how cremation has transformed an entire funeral industry in a single generation, and in the process saving money, time, and space. However, funeral directors have already invented new ways to cash in on the vulnerable. These include: "crematable" caskets, rental caskets, and pre-cremation funerals. Drawing from hundreds of interviews, Grave Exodus will explain why so many people now choose cremation over traditional burial. It traces the history of cremation from ancient days of the flaming funeral pyre to the modern high-speed high-output crematory. Grave Exodus offers a thoughtful prophecy of how we will dispose of our dead in the century to come. It is a sobering, but sometimes humorous account of one of the oddest and most rapidly changing industries in the United States today. Not since Jessica Mitfor'ds 1963 expose of the funeral industry in The American Way of Death has there been such a valuable book for informing the general public on an industry that will, sooner or later, affect us all. -- Midwest Book Review
