The American Way of Death Revisited is almost unforgivably funny.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

Jessica Mitford, Mordant Critic of American Ways, and a British Upbringing, Dies at 78

By RICHARD SEVEROJessica Mitford, whose book "The American Way of Death" won her enormous popularity as an irreverent muckraker and witty polemicist, died yesterday at her home in Oakland, Calif. She was 78.
The cause was cancer, said her daughter, Constancia Romilly.
Over the more than three decades that she wrote nonfiction, Miss Mitford railed against those who tried to suppress dissent over the Vietnam War, against a prison system she found to be corrupt and brutalizing, and against a medical profession she thought was greedy and given to unnecessary procedures. She even exposed the odd doings of her sisters.
But it was "The American Way of Death," published in 1963, that made the British-born Miss Mitford a formidable literary figure in her adopted country. Near her death she was preparing a revision to be published next year by Alfred A. Knopf.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The American Way of Death Revisited is almost unforgivably funny. Jessica Mitford's exposé of the funeral industry, a number one bestseller upon first publication, is a model of muckraking--an almost incredible description of how undertakers in the U.S. assault people's souls and wallets. Before her death in 1996, Mitford devoted most of her energy to this revised edition of her masterwork, which zeroes in on funeral prepayment (the chapter is titled "Pay Now--Die Poorer"), the new multinational funeral corporations ("A Global Village of the Dead"), and the Federal Trade Commission's failure to enforce the laws the first edition of this book helped bring about. The book's greatest treasure is probably her shocking and hilarious description of exactly what happens in the process of embalming. Equally impressive, however, is her chapter called "The Nosy Clergy," which describes the collusion and competition between America's undertakers and its preachers. --Michael Joseph Gross --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

At the time of her death in 1996, Mitford had nearly completed this revision of her 1963 bestseller, a scathing critique of the U.S. funeral industry. Extensively revised, with subsequent additions by her husband, lawyer Robert Treuhaft, Lisa Carlson, an activist in the funeral-reform movement, and research assistant Karen Leonard, Mitford's mordant look at the excesses of the high-pressure salesmanship and lapses of taste of the "death-care industry" still rings true, and the book will evoke readers' ire. Mitford identifies disturbing new trends: cremation, once a low-cost option, has become increasingly expensive as mortuaries pressure the bereaved to buy a "traditional" funeral with all the accoutrements. Monopolistic companies have moved into the field and now account for 20% of the nation's funerals. Furthermore, she charges, the Federal Trade Commission's lax enforcement of its 1984 rule banning morticians' deceptive practices has contributed to an upward spiral of prices and profits. Other developments of the 1990s perceptively analyzed here include the refusal of many funeral directors to embalm AIDS victims and the growing popularity of low-cost funeral and memorial service organizations, which are listed in an appendix.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The American Way of Death

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The American Way of Death
Author(s)	Jessica Mitford
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Exposé
Publisher	Buccaneer Books
Publication date	1963
Media type	Print (Hardback &Paperback)
Pages	333
ISBN	ISBN 1-56849-159-X
OCLC Number	231893352
Preceded by	'Hons and Rebels'
Followed by	''The Trial of Dr. Spock, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., Michael Ferber, Mitchel Goodman, and Marcus Raskin''

The American Way of Death is an exposé of abuses in the funeral home industry in the United States, written by Jessica Mitford and published in 1963. Feeling that death had become much too sentimentalized, highly commercialized, and, above all, excessively expensive, Mitford published her research, which, she argues, documents the ways in which funeral directors take advantage of the shock and grief of friends and relatives of loved ones to convince them to pay far more than necessary for the funeral and other services, such as availability of so-called "grief counselors," a title she claims is unmerited.

An updated revision, The American Way of Death Revisited, completed by Mitford just before her death in 1996, appeared in 1998.

In keeping with her wishes, Mitford herself had an inexpensive funeral, which cost $533.31 – she was cremated without a ceremony, and the ashes scattered at sea; the cremation itself cost $475.^[1]The funeral company was the Pacific Interment Service, which prides itself on "dignity, simplicity, affordability".^[2]

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