Meier is a cemetery tour guide in Brooklyn, where she lives. She surveys American burial customs in particular, noting the lack of respect for Black and Native American burial grounds, the Civil War-era history of embalming, the increasing popularity of cremation, and the rise of garden cemeteries such as Mount Auburn in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which can serve as wildlife havens. The mass casualties and fear of infection associated with Covid-19 brought back memories of the AIDS epidemic, especially for those in New York City. Meier travels to a wide range of resting places, from potter’s fields for unclaimed bodies to the most manicured cemeteries. She also talks about newer options such as green burial, body composting, and the many memorial objects ashes can be turned into. I’m a dedicated reader of books about death and so found this fascinating, with the perfect respectful and just-shy-of-melancholy tone. It’s political and philosophical in equal measures.

This was my first read from this series and definitely won't be the last! This particular subject was super interesting and Meier was the perfect person to write it. Will definitely be checking out more from the series!

Another informative read in this series. As with all the books in this series, I learned a lot about the subject matter. I found the history of graves and cemeteries fascinating and Meier is the perfect person to share her knowledge of this area. I like to keep a print copy of an Object Lesson book with me at all time as they are portable and fascinating reads when needed. Thank you!

I have had a very up and down relationship with the Object Lessons series, short books that focus on the hidden history of everyday objects; it seems that I alternate between “very interesting” and “not at all”. My last book was the very enjoyable “Alarm” by Alice Bennett, which means that I approached “Grave” by Allison C. Meier with a bit of trepidation. But this is the one that broke the pattern, an enjoyable look into how we prepare and remember our loved ones on their final journey.

As a cemetery tour guide in New York, Ms. Meier is exceptionally qualified to provide a perspective on her topic. We start with the concept of graves, of our attempts to have a place to remember our departed. As societies grew, we progressed from burial grounds attached to a place of worship to free standing cemeteries, a place set aside to bury the dead. Here in the US, the concept of permanent resting place was created (in general), but mostly for the well-to-do, the poor were either in mass graves or were moved on after a set time elapsed. The Native Americans and slaves were also treated poorly from the start, social status still dictated your geography even after your death. Ms. Meier also provides a bit of history around the grave robbers who stole cadavers for medical schools and experiments, a practice which continued much more recently than one would imagine.

We then move to current practices and changing viewpoints on what the future may look like. Some cemeteries now focus more on the living than the dead, with the cemetery being treated more as a park than a monument. Cremation is an option that is getting more and more popular, but we also explore the future which may include “green” burials and even human composting(!).

Ms. Meier does a great job blending wide viewpoints of history with personal anecdotes and visits to make her point, with the treatment of AIDS victims in New York a poignant reminder of how people can be cruel even in recent memory. Be aware that this book comes from a perspective which is uniquely American in nature, with very little about how other countries and cultures treat their dead. Overall this object lesson is a great approach to a topic most of us avoid thinking about until it’s too late.

I requested and received a free advanced electronic copy from Bloomsbury Academic via NetGalley. Thank you!

This was a fascinating look into the idea of the grave, and the cultural practice of burying our dead. It's not something many consider, and this book is a great primer on the topic.

I’m seeing our abundant cemeteries with new eyes after reading Grave, Allison Meier’s first-person guided tour through the intriguing world of necrogeography. Her deep understanding of the historical, geographical, social, and psychological facets of the grave pair well with Meier’s appealing prose. Humans have made a great start toward covering our planet with headstones but Meier’s well-documented research explains both how we got here and new-to-me sustainable alternatives. Like the author, my cremation plans are not nearly so certain in light of options described in Grave. It’s an entertaining, enlightening look at a mix of old and new ideas about living in a good place to die.

In contrast to the rest of the books in this series, looking at many an everyday thing we haven't thought about, much less read a whole book about, comes this – touching on something we will only have in the future, but may well be yet to organise for others. This finds a new flaw for the series – as opposed to the ultra-lefty, woke, race-baiting, pronoun-mangling, and autobiography for the sake of nothing and the benefit of nobody – by being fairly US-centric, but that is excusable given the author's location, expertise, sufferance of covid lockdown and so much more. It doesn't actually make for that much an inferior volume.

This suitably takes us from the original burial sites in the US (well, a mound here or there at least) and shows us some of New York State's places for European settlers to be interred. Gradually we build up in time to the present and beyond, somewhere nobody currently in their grave will likely end up. Here is the slow switch to cremation, the green, eco, tree-feeding funeral, the shooting into space – and even the manner in which the decomposition of a body can power a street lamp or something. Let's face it, you may well want to be buried in a city you love, and find the nearest plot miles from its centre unless you have some major renown, so how best to keep the light of your life shining for your kin than with a LED light here or there?

This is friendly, amenable, thoroughly academic yet entirely readable. It is the most positive volume to mention death this much that you could ever hope for. I do insist it being thought of for North Americans only, despite its trips to the Paris catacombs and talk of future death experts at Bath University – I am British and I really don't recognise the concept of the home funeral, unless you count that time I dug a hole for a rabbit outside the back garden. (Oh, and the cradle grave certainly does not look at all British – looking more like a flipping bath tub than a grave.) But again, this is more than able to make you consider the unspoken, spot the unimagined thought coming into your mind, and engage with the death and consequences of us all – and boy do deaths have consequences (just ask early AIDS sufferers). I wouldn't be at all surprised if the creator of this felt like including it in her interment, for even to a layman such as I this smacks of being a fine achievement.

This is a powerhouse of non-fiction that will definitely have me searching out other volumes in the series. Though short, Meier delves deep into the history and meaning of burial rites and sites from the influence of human psychology and society to powerful historical and social forces and the impact of racism and religious intolerance. It's very short but it packs a powerful punch, managing to be moving, insightful and informative.

Written during the pandemic it is particularly poignant in this context of many people's first experience of mass death which highlighted the cracks in the funerary industry and caused many to realise that a radical rethink of the way we deal with death and memorialising the dead is required. It is heavily US-centric but Meier provides much-needed context by highlighting different approaches in other parts of the world as well as shining a light on the way the burial sites and practices of indigenous peoples, enslaved peoples, POCs and other religions as well as other marginalised people such as the poor and indigent have been desecrated, destroyed and denied the appropriate respect. New trends in dealing with the dead were fascinating to read about as were the many social projects dedicated to providing forgotten and marginalised groups with dignity in death.

The writing is a pleasure to read, empathetic, sensitive but unsentimental and Meier's work as a cemetery guide provides personal context for her research.

Grave by Allison C. Meier is part of the Object Lessons, a series of short books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. As a cemetery historian, I found the book a nice introduction-level read for those who might not have picked up any books on this topic. The author is "an Oklahoma-born, Brooklyn-based writer focused on visual culture, architecture, and overlooked history. Bylines include the New York Times, Hyperallergic, Atlas Obscura, CityLab, Curbed, National Geographic, the Public Domain Review, Wellcome Collection, the New Inquiry, Lapham's Quarterly, Smithsonian, Mental Floss, Slate, ArtDesk, Raw Vision Magazine, Reasons to Be Cheerful, JSTOR Daily, Urban Omnibus, Chicago Magazine, the Offing, ARTNews, Narratively, Nineteenth Century magazine, Collectors Weekly, Bunk History, AFAR, Dilettante Army, Glasstire, Artsy, Nightingale, 1stdibs, Death in the Afternoon Podcast, Fine Books Magazine, Brooklyn Based, 20×200, GOOD, the Order of the Good Death, and the Oklahoma Gazette." In Grave, readers learn that she is also a cemetery tour guide in New York City and from her website, I learned that she is a licensed New York City sightseeing guide.

"Grave takes a ground-level view of how burial sites have transformed over time and how they continue to change. As a cemetery tour guide, Allison C. Meier has spent more time walking among tombstones than most. Even for her, the grave has largely been invisible, an out of the way and unobtrusive marker of death. However, graves turn out to be not always so subtle, reverent, or permanent.

While the indigent and unidentified have frequently been interred in mass graves, a fate brought into the public eye during the COVID-19 pandemic, the practice today is not unlike burials in the potter's fields of the colonial era. Burial is not the only option, of course, and Meier analyzes the rise of cremation, green burial, and new practices like human composting, investigating what is next for the grave and how existing spaces of death can be returned to community life.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.”

Table of Contents
1. The Grave: Our House of Eternity
2. Navigating Through Necrogeography
3. The Living and the Dead
4. The Privilege of Permanence
5. An Eternal Room of Our Own
6. No Resting Place
7. To Decay or Not to Decay
8. New Ideas for the Afterlife
9. Dead Space

I really enjoyed this book! I'm personally very interested in the topic of graves, so I knew this would be a hit for me but I also thing it has the ability to be appealing to a lot of different people! I would absolutely recommend this to someone who likes Mary Roach's work as it feels very similar.

"Grave" by Allison C. Meier is a fascinating non-fiction exploration of the history, culture, and significance of graveyards around the world. Meier, an experienced writer and historian, takes the reader on a journey through different cemeteries, from the famous Père Lachaise in Paris to the hidden gems of New York City, discussing their unique features, notable graves, and the customs surrounding death and mourning in different cultures.

. This is a very interesting book about the history, both past and present of graves. Yes, the kind in cemeteries and graveyards. If you are a fan of Mary Roach’s “Stiff” or other books, you will probably enjoy this also.

Bloomsbury Academic’s Object Lesson series is a wondrous thing. Each of these concise books seeks to thoroughly analyze a singular aspect of day to day life. Previous publications within this series look at things such as Traffic or the High Heel. The latest addition to the series, released in February of this year, is Grave by Allison C. Meier.

Meier has worked as a cemetery tour guide in New York City since 2011. An accomplished writer, her previous credits include publications within National Geographic, Mental Floss, and the Order of the Good Death. She is also the senior editor of Atlas Obscura. That passion for bringing attention to little-known people and bits of history serves her well in Grave, as so much of what surrounds the topic of death and dying is often forgotten.

Grave is a concise book, coming in at under 200 pages even including the ample citations. The chapters within it come across as miniature essays, and begin with Meier explaining her own fascination with the historic cemetery near where she lived and how she came to be a guide within it. Throughout the book, she explains how society has changed its view of death and dying. Once, cemeteries were burial grounds full of reminders of one’s own mortality. Now, cemeteries are cemeteries… and the progenitors of the more common park. Less hidden from view, especially now after the COVID-19 Pandemic, she makes the argument that our views of death are once more changing.

Meier takes care to pay more attention to how death is dealt with among the poor, indigent, and minority communities than the rich. The result of this focus is a broader view of history than most texts that I’ve previously come across on the topic of death. She takes care, also, to explain why practices such as cremation and embalming, both of which have been and remain controversial among certain subsets of the population, have been viewed as positive things as well. There is no real wrong way to die and to grieve, and this book covers some of the wide variety of ways people have gone about both.

This book is an interesting, contemplative read. Of particular interest is Meier’s attention to how funeral practices of the future might look. Recompose, mushroom suits, and water cremation are all intriguing answers to the problems that few want to really consider. Our cemeteries are filling up, and we are more nomadic now as a race than we have been in some time. Mausoleums are the way of the past… but the future has quite a few ever-growing options, many of them more environmentally friendly. Meier forces the reader to consider their own mortality and what they might wish to happen to their body after they pass, but she also shows the way that all might have a good death.

*I received a copy of this book as an ARC for review
This book was very well researched and gave a good overview of different, alternative options to burial. The author definitely came across as passionate about what they wrote about and since the topic of more communal burial means is often overlooked, it was refreshing to find them so highly spoken of here. The only criticism I would give is that I wish it would've been a touch longer and more in-depth. However, I do think this would be a fantastic resource for someone who just started researching grave alternatives.

After reading “Will my Cat Eat my Eyeballs?”, I’ve been very interested in nonfiction about death. This book did not disappoint. It was very interesting and at times funny. I learned a lot from reading it.

Grave by Allison C. Meier is part of an essay and book series called Object Lessons, published by The Atlantic and Bloomsbury Academic, about the hidden lives of ordinary things, from silence to drones, pregnancy tests to graves, hair to dirt— nothing is off limits! Each work in the series explores a particular object, revealing a multitude of often unexpected nuances to the seemingly ordinary. While I had heard of Object Lessons, Grave was my first foray into this series. Grave begins with a meditation, interweaving the historical, philosophical and romantic, on what the object, the grave, is and how it came to be. Meier closes the meditation outlining the intention of her work, “to look at the grave of the past, present, and future,”— “an exploration of the American gave, how we got where we are now, and how the ways we care for the dead are changing.”

In the second chapter, Meier lays the foundation for the grave, historically and contextually, discussing necrogeography, the physical burial ground and cemetery, as well as establishing the concept of a permanent grave as uniquely American. Meier presents the transition, ideological and semantic, from “burial grounds” to “cemeteries” and discusses the erasure of indigenous and minority burial grounds. The chapter closes by outlining the changing sentimentality toward the physical space, visualized through changing iconography on gravemarkers; the transition of burial from intramural to extramural, an analogue to the medicalization or death and its removal from the community; and the shift of the cemetery from a place for the dead to a place for the living.

The next four chapters—The Living and The Dead, The Privilege of Permanence, An Eternal Room of One’s Own, and No Resting Place—discuss privilege, permanence, individual space juxtaposed to the collective, and memorialization. The author uses a variety of examples—from the description and imagery of physical spaces to individual stories—to highlight and reinforce the context and meaning of the topics addressed in each chapter. In this section, Meier brings us face to face with America’s history of colonization and how, even in death, there exists erasure through racism, cultural superiority, classism, health (or lack there of) or by way of some other construct of otherness. These four chapters, while they may appear to some as a break with the intention of the book, are crucial to understanding the American grave as a conceptual whole. These chapters call us to acknowledge the ways in which inequality persists in death, reflecting the inequalities of our lived experiences.

The book ends with a discussion— in the last three chapters: To Decay or Not To Decay, New Ideas for the Afterlife, and Dead Space— on the future of the grave, a transformation and re-envisioning of possibility and purpose. Meier calls us to action, to instill new ideas into historical places; to rethink the future of the grave; to move the grave back into our communities and to do and be better about respectfully and meaningfully honoring all the departed—she says, “<i>I want live in a good place to die.” And thereby asks us, Don’t you?

This was a very moving argument to re-envision the purpose and meaning of the grave individually and collectively as both an expression of identity as well as a model of community care.

Disclosure: I received an Advanced Reader Copy of Grave from NetGalley and Bloomsbury Academic in exchange for an honest review.

While Grave reminded me of the work of other similar authors, like Mary Roach or Caitlin Doughty, I didn't find the writing quite as compelling. Still, it was interesting and I think it will find readership in my library. Will purchase for the collection.

Thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Academic for the ARC of this!

After having read a few non-fiction on death - Roach’s Stiff and Doughty’s Smoke Gets in Your Eyes stand out, this didn’t feel jam packed with new information. That said it was an easy to consume little book that could definitely be a good starting point. It wasn’t too dry and it was quick.

I received a copy of this book from Net Galley, in exchange for an honest review. Until this book, I was unfamiliar with the ongoing Object Lessons series, so that is something I wish to explore.

Grave. I confess, I am a taphophile. I have always been attracted to the gravestones in cemeteries; the art and history of them. While this book appealed to this part of me, and there were MANY interesting facts and tidbits included here, I am not a fan of the way it was written. There was no flow. It was a hard read.

Allison C. Meier's entry into the ongoing Object Lessons series, Grave, focuses on the history of American burials and graveyards while touching on the human history of death and dying as it relates to American practices. As stated on page 14: "This [book] is an exploration of the American grave, how we got to where we are now, and how the ways we care for the dead are changing."

Meier begins, as one would expect, with the fact that we all die, but then branches out with considerations on what our deaths mean to family our the wider society. The book is divided into nine chapters that explore the different aspects of our uniquely American funerary practices both historic and contemporary.

Some topics covered are not surprising, such as the creation of the Parisian catacombs, some of New York City's historic graveyards, the roles (poor) cadavers played in the history of medicine and the history of embalming. A particular poignant section discusses some "forgotten" cemeteries that interrogates the ideas of who gets to be buried, where they get buried and whether or not those remains are left to rest in peace.

Where the book excels most is in discussing contemporary practices. Cremation continues to grow in popularity. Meier also details practices, including: the poorly named "human composting," water cremation, biomass donations, treemation or "green burials."

As its central purpose, this book should get the reader to consider how they would like their body to be treated at their death. Recommended for readers who liked Mary Roaches Stiff or viewers of YouTube's "Ask the Mortician" (Caitlin Doherty).