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Certain symbols abound in modern Western culture that are instantly recognizable: the cross signifies Christianity, the six-pointed Star of David is revered by Jews, the golden arches frequently means it's time for lunch. Other symbols, however, require a bit of decoding-particularly those found in cemeteries. < BR> Cemeteries are virtual encyclopedias of symbolism. Engravings on tombstones, mausoleums and memorials tell us just about everything there is to know about a person- date of birth and death as well as religion, ethnicity, occupation, community interests, and much more. In the fascinating new book Stories in Stone: The Complete Guide to Cemetery Symbolism by noted author Douglas Keister, the secrets of cemetery symbolism are finally revealed. For instance, did you know that it is quite rare to see a sunflower on a tombstone? Did you know that the human foot symbolizes humility and service since it consistently touches the earth? Or the humble sheaf of wheat-while it is often used to denote someone who has lived a long and fruitful life, do you know other meanings it might carry? < BR> Stories in Stone provides history along with images of a wide variety of common and not-so-common cemetery symbols, and offers an in-depth examination of stone relics and the personal and intimate details they display-flora and fauna, religious icons, society symbols, and final impressions of how the deceased wished to be remembered. Douglas Keister has created a practical field guide that is compact and portable, perfect for those interested in family histories and genealogical research, and is the only book of its kind that unlocks the language of symbols in a comprehensive and easy-to-understand manner. < BR> Douglas Keister has photographed fourteen award-winning, critically acclaimed books (including Red Tile Style: America's Spanish Revival Architecture, The Bungalow: America's Arts & Crafts Home, and Storybook Style: America's Whimsical Homes of the Twenties) earning him the title "America's most noted photographer of historic architecture." He also writes and illustrates magazine articles and contributes photographs and essays to other books, calendars, posters, and greeting cards. Doug lives in Chico, California, and travels frequently to photograph and lecture on historic architecture and photography.< BR>.
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A sweeping history of America as seen through its gravestones, graveyards, and burial practices, stunningly illustrated with eighty black-and-white photographs

Cemeteries and burial grounds, as illuminated by an acclaimed cultural historian, are unique windows onto our religious, ethnic, and deeply human history as Americans.

The dedicated mother-son team of Marilyn and Reid Yalom visited hundreds of cemeteries to create The American Resting Place, following a coast-to-coast trajectory that mirrors the vast historical pattern of American migration.

Yalom's incisive, often poignant exploration of gravestone inscriptions reveal changing ideas about death and personal identity, and demonstrate how class and gender play out in stone. Rich particulars include the story of one seventeenth-century Bostonian who amassed a thousand pairs of gloves in his funeral-going lifetime, the unique burial rites and funerary symbols found in today's Native American cultures, and a "lost" Czech community brought uncannily to life in Chicago's Bohemian National Columbarium.

From fascinating past to startling future--DVDs embedded in tombstones, "green" burials, and "the new aesthetic of death"--The American Resting Place is the definitive history of the American cemetery..
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This slender volume encapsulates more information on graveyard preservation than any other restoration guidebook available Packed with effective methods of maintenance and repair, "A Graveyard Preservation Primer" will help you restore and prolong the life of the stones in your care. Numerous photos and illustrations further clarify and demonstrate different problems and remedies for the beginning preservationist. Strangstad, who is familiar with historic yards from Halifax to Savannah, provides a step-by-step guidebook that is an indispensable reference tool for anyone interested in graveyard preservation..
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When author/photographer Douglas Keister's book Stories in Stone came out in 2004, Sunset magazine stated, "Keister has done for cemetery exploration what Audubon did for birding " Since then, cemetery fans have been clamoring for more. Keister has answered them with Forever Dixie, an exploration of thirteen of the South's best cemeteries and forty notable southerners who have chosen to call the South their permanent home.
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Located off the southwest coast of Mount Desert Island in Maine, Gotts Island, a mile across and three miles round, is ringed with bright granite--a "rock bound belt" that suggests concreteness, independence, and separation from the sea around it. But no island, no place, ever stands alone and unchanging The small, close-knit community established on Gotts Island in the late eighteenth century disappeared in the twentieth, leaving behind mere traces, names on the cemetery stones. In its wake came the summer people, returning year after year, with "bags, bundles, and memory."

Having purchased the house of poet and writer Ruth Moore in 1965, Christina Gillis has been a summer resident of Gotts Island for more than forty years. Each summer she and her husband, John, arrive with their books, projects, and lives. On the island they watched their young sons, Chris and Ben, turn from "two small blond boys in high-top overalls" to "shirtless adolescents" and finally to young men.

But the place that was a constant center in their lives, that nourished them and their friendships with visitors and neighbors, assumed a more profound significance for the Gillis family in 1992 when they buried the ashes of their son Ben in the island cemetery. Ben had been killed seven months earlier while flying a small plane in Kenya. In the cemetery overlooking the sea, once the heart of the village and still central to the community, he joined generations of earlier islanders to become a "name in stone."

In this elegant and gentle memoir of place and experience, the author takes the reader on a tour of the island, making connections between its stark physical beauty, its known and unknown places, and the decades of memories and myths it encompasses. Gillis describes the social role of the dock, the portal for arrivals and departures that are so important to island life; she traverses the pathways that cross the Island, offering up its topographical intricacies and secrets; and she revisits the cemetery that, though bounded by its fence, shares a field with the annual Fourth of July softball game. A location of loss is also a place of life..
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In many cemeteries, particularly in Europe, one can find 19th-century sculptures of idealized images of women, elaborately posed and sculpted with great care and artistic flair. David Robinson's photographs capture the sensual beauty and mystery of these lifelike sculptures. In her foreword, Joyce Carol Oates explores the many implications of the grief-stricken, extremely provocative female figures - the obsession with mortality, the rituals of mourning, the conflation of death and the erotic, and the perfect female form as a male fantasy and a symbol of status..
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In Puritan New England, with its abiding concern for things not of this world and its distrust of forms and ceremonies, one art flourished: the symbolic art of mortuary monument stonecarvers This carefully researched, beautifully illustrated work was the first to consider this art in depth as a meaningful aesthetic-spiritual expression. It is reissued for today's readers, with a new preface outlining changes in the field since the book appeared in 1966..
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A collection of photographs from the burial grounds of Europe explores the beauty of cemeteries and the emotions the survivors of the dead placed into the making of the tombs, accompanied by a meditation on the death of his own parents by Dean Koontz. 60,000 first printing..
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Guardians of the Soul: Angels and innocents, mourners and saints—Indiana’s remarkable cemetery sculpture offers rare beauty, poignant emotion, and a renewed connection to our past. With breathtaking images by Hoosier photographer John Bower, and a foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winner Claude Cookman of Indiana University, this timeless book makes a perfect gift or keepsake.

To create this stunning book, Bower and his wife, Lynn, traveled throughout Southern Indiana, thoroughly exploring its cemeteries. The result is over 180 breathtaking, duotone images of glorious, larger-than-life marble angels, as well as charming, folk-art children carved in limestone by local artisans. There are also mourning women, brave soldiers, and adorable animals. Crafted in a variety of styles, materials, and sizes, they all radiate with the love, hope, and faith of the family members who erected them.

The statues Bower has captured are simply extraordinary. As he says in the Introduction, "I see cemeteries as nothing less than outdoor museums. In fact, I will go so far as to say they constitute a national treasure.".
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Meyer examines burial grounds through the centuries and across the United States to give a different view of the history and cultural values of America..
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