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The thesis of the book, a scathing indictment of the American funeral industry, was that undertakers had "Successfully turned the tables in recent years to perpetrate a huge, macabre and expensive practical joke on the American public."
She explored the changing lexicon of death, in which undertakers had come to call themselves "funeral directors" and "morticians," coffins had become "caskets," and hearses had become "professional cars." In the new order, she said, flowers were "floral tributes" and corpses were always called "loved ones." One of the results of all this, she said, was that the cost of dying was rising faster than was the cost of living.
She told her readers unsettling things about their neighborhood. undertakers, much to the dismay of the trade, and at the end of the book included a list of medical schools 'that might have good use for a dead body. She felt strongly that someone's mortal remains would be better off studied by medical students than transformed into a profit center for those in the business of marketing and planning funerals.
Her other books attracted much attention, although none as much as "The American Way of Death." She also wrote "The Trial of Dr. Spock, William Sloan Coffin Jr., Michael Ferber, Mitchell Goodman and Marcus Raskin" (1969), five who were accused of aiding and abetting those who sought to violate the Selective Service Act. Among her other books were "Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business" (1973), a study of American prisons, which she found wanting in almost everything except brutality;" "A Fine Old Conflict" (1977), a memoir of her Communist days; "Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking" (1979), and "The American Way of Birth" (1992), in which she accused doctors of doing too many Caesarean sections and of not paying enough attention to the possibilities offered by midwifery.
She also wrote articles for Life, Esquire, The Nation and The San Francisco Chronicle.
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