
Over My Dead Body
Unearthing the Hidden History of American Cemeteries
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Narrated by:
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Will Tulin
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By:
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Greg Melville
About this listen
A lively tour through the history of US cemeteries that explores how, where, and why we bury our dead
The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown, and thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the place told of his town and its history. Thus was born Melville’s lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead.
Melville’s Over My Dead Body is a lively (pun intended) and wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it. Cemeteries have given birth to landscape architecture and famous parks, as well as influenced architectural styles. They’ve inspired and motivated some of our greatest poets and authors—Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson. They’ve been used as political tools to shift the country’s discourse and as important symbols of the United States' ambition and reach.
But they are changing and fading. Embalming and burial is incredibly toxic, and while cremations have just recently surpassed burials in popularity, they’re not great for the environment either. Over My Dead Body explores everything—history, sustainability, land use, and more—and what it really means to memorialize.
Locales visited in Over My Dead Body
Shawsheen Cemetery–Bedford, Massachusetts
The 1607 Burial Ground–Historic Jamestowne, Virginia
Burial Hill–Plymouth, Massachusetts
Colonial Jewish Burial Ground–Newport, Rhode Island
Monticello’s African American Graveyard–Charlottesville, Virginia
Mount Auburn Cemetery–Cambridge, Massachusetts
Green-Wood Cemetery–Brooklyn, New York
Laurel Grove Cemetery–Savannah, Georgia
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery–Concord, Massachusetts
Central Park–New York, New York
Gettysburg National Cemetery–Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Arlington National Cemetery–Arlington, Virginia
Woodlawn Cemetery–Bronx, New York
Boothill Graveyard–Tombhill, Arizona
Forest Lawn Memorial-Park–Glenwood, California
The Chapel of the Chimes–Oakland, California
Hollywood Forever Cemetery–Los Angeles, California
Nature's Sanctuary–Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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Story
In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous.
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I’m from Pleasant Grove where rumors of Jay’s Journal are alive and well
- By Ruby Tuesday on 10-06-22
By: Rick Emerson
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Tremors in the Blood
- Murder, Obsession, and the Birth of the Lie Detector
- By: Amit Katwala
- Narrated by: Paul Bellantoni
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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As new forms of lie detection gain momentum in the present day, Tremors in the Blood reveals the incredible truth behind the creation of the polygraph, through gripping true-crime cases featuring explosive gunfights, shocking twists, and high-stakes courtroom drama. Touching on psychology, technology, and the science of the truth, Tremors in the Blood is a vibrant, atmospheric thriller and a warning from history: beware what you believe.
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Incredible Book
- By Christine on 01-04-24
By: Amit Katwala
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The Angel Makers
- Arsenic, a Midwife, and Modern History’s Most Astonishing Murder Ring
- By: Patti McCracken
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The Angel Makers is a true-crime story like no other—a 1920s midwife who may have been the century’s most prolific killer leading a murder ring of women responsible for the deaths of at least 160 men.
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Interesting Story, Questionable Execution
- By Claire H Denham on 03-27-23
By: Patti McCracken
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All That Remains
- A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes
- By: Sue Black
- Narrated by: Angela Dawe
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Dame Sue Black is an internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist. She has lived her life eye to eye with the Grim Reaper, and she writes vividly about it in this book, which is part primer on the basics of identifying human remains, part frank memoir of a woman whose first paying job as a schoolgirl was to apprentice in a butcher shop, and part no-nonsense but deeply humane introduction to the reality of death in our lives. It is a treat for CSI junkies, murder mystery and thriller fans, and anyone seeking a clear-eyed guide to a subject that touches us all.
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I wanted a science book about forensics. I got a mostly-memoir instead.
- By A Customer on 11-29-19
By: Sue Black
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Over My Dead Body
- By: Maz Evans
- Narrated by: Maz Evans
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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When the misanthropic Dr Miriam Price wakes up dead, her day has only just started to go wrong. With everyone mistakenly thinking she killed herself, she's condemned to half a century in Limbo as a 'Death By Misadventure' - unless she can prove that she was murdered. Unable to communicate with anyone living, Miriam's investigative options look decidedly limited.
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Never a Dull Moment!
- By wisconsinclark on 06-11-24
By: Maz Evans
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All That Is Wicked
- A Gilded-Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind
- By: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Narrated by: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Edward Rulloff was a brilliant yet utterly amoral murderer—some have called him a “Victorian-era Hannibal Lecter”—whose crimes spanned decades and whose victims were chosen out of revenge, out of envy, and sometimes out of necessity.
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PLEASE STOP The Politicizing of Everything
- By Anonymous on 10-15-22
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The Black Angels
- The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis
- By: Maria Smilios
- Narrated by: Gina Daniels
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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During those dark pre-antibiotic days, when tuberculosis killed one in seven people, white nurses at Sea View, New York’s largest municipal hospital, began quitting. Desperate to avert a public health crisis, city officials summoned Black southern nurses, luring them with promises of good pay, a career, and an escape from the strictures of Jim Crow. But after arriving, they found themselves on an isolated hilltop in the remote borough of Staten Island, yet again confronting racism and consigned to a woefully understaffed facility, dubbed “the pest house” where “no one left alive.”
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Tons of amazing medical American/black history that easily reads like your favorite novel.
- By Infowiz on 01-31-24
By: Maria Smilios
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Stiff
- The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
- By: Mary Roach
- Narrated by: Shelly Frasier
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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For two thousand years, cadavers have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender reassignment surgery, cadavers have been there alongside surgeons, making history in their quiet way.
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I worked with cadavers for years, but....
- By POQA on 11-11-12
By: Mary Roach
More editing needs done, especially Chapter 12
Great History, but made it political
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The author excels at this from the beginning of the book as he contextualizes his own hometown cemetery during his time working there while a youth. However, his excellence begins to wane in the final third of the book as he moves closer and closer to the present.
By the Epilogue, he has lost his anthropological lens and has taken up a thin memoir POV. I left the book feeling cheated.
The book is worth the first two-thirds and the excellent narrator. Just stop before the Hollywood Forever chapter.
Looses Steam Near the End
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Death and the End
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More than I expected
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thought provoking
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Death should be something we talk about
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Best book I've listened to for a long time...
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My only complaint is in Chapter 12, where there was some poor editing and the reader repeats one section like six times. Otherwise, I thought the production was great.
excellent read!
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Fascinating history!
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Excellent read on a seldom discussed topic
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