Grave

The cultural object that makes us human.
Grave takes a ground-level view of the changing landscape of burial sites. As a cemetery tour guide, Allison C. Meier has spent more time among tombstones than most. Even for her, the grave has been largely invisible, an out of the way and unobtrusive marker of death. But a closer look shows graves are not always as reverent, or permanent as they seem.
Rather than dwelling on death, Meier looks at what graves mean to those left behind, exploring how graves inform and are informed by grief. Though our graves are not as diverse as our dead, its rituals and shape have a fascinating, changing history. Analyzing the rise of cremation, green burial, and new practices like human composting, Meier looks at the future of the grave and how existing spaces of death can be returned to community life.
This book is the latest in the Object Lessons series. Published in association with the Atlantic, it explores the hidden lives of ordinary things and what they can teach us about ourselves and the modern world.
Allison C. Meier is a writer and researcher based in New York City. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Lapham’s Quarterly, Smithsonian Magazine, New Inquiry, and Slate, among other outlets. She moonlights as a cemetery tour guide.