Angela Esco Elder is Associate Professor of History at Converse University. This interview is based on her new book, Love and Duty: Confederate Widows and the Emotional Politics of Loss (The University of North Carolina Press, 2022). JF: What led...
death
The Author’s Corner with Sarah Purcell
Sarah Purcell is L.F. Parker Professor of History at Grinnell College. This interview is based on her new book, Spectacle of Grief: Public Funerals and Memory in the Civil War Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2022). JF: What led...
800,156 Americans have died of COVID-19
According to NBC News. The number of deaths due to COVID-19 in the two years the virus has been in the United States is now higher than some of the most liberal estimates of the number of deaths in the...
“Death, for all us, is a journey interrupted”
When was the last time you saw material like this from New York Times opinion writer? Thank you Tish Harrison Warren. A taste: The truth is, no one — not priests, not scientists, not the most ardent atheist, not the...
Remember your death
Over at The New York Times, Ruth Graham has a fascinating piece on Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble of the Daughters of St. Paul convent in Boston. Here is a taste: These days, Sister Aletheia has no shortage of skulls. People...
Tim Keller reflects on his battle with pancreatic cancer
How does a Christian face death? Timothy Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Church in New York City, has been counseling others about death his entire life. As he battles pancreatic cancer he must now start to take some of...
Editor of *First Things* Magazine: “There are many things more precious than life”
An editor of a magazine or journal sets it ideological course. R.R. Reno, a conservative Catholic, is the editor of First Things. Since it was founded by Richard John Neuhaus in 1990, First Things has been a beacon of the pro-life movement. So...
The Author’s Corner with Shannon Bontrager
Shannon Bontrager is Associate Professor of History at Georgia Highlands College. This interview is based on his new book, Death at the Edges of Empire: Fallen Soldiers, Cultural Memory, and the Making of an American Nation, 1863-1921 (University of Nebraska...
The Author’s Corner with Erik Seeman
Erik Seeman is Professor of History and History Department Chair at the University at Buffalo. This interview is based on his new book, Speaking with the Dead in Early America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). JF: What led you to write Speaking with...
The Author’s Corner with Brian Dirck
Brian Dirck is a Professor of History at Anderson University. This interview is based on his new book, The Black Heavens: Abraham Lincoln and Death (Southern Illinois University Press, 2019). JF: What led you to write The Black Heavens: Abraham Lincoln and...
“As the boomers have aged, denial of death…has moved to the center of American culture”
Check out Yale historian Gabriel Winant‘s review of Barbara Ehrenreich‘s new book: Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Our Illusion of Self Control. Here is a taste: Ehrenreich contemplates with some satisfaction not just the approach...
Grieving as a Historian
Stepháne Gerson, a historian of France at New York University, lost his eight-year old son on rafting trip on the Utah and Colorado border in 2006. His Chronicle of Higher Education essay, “History in the Face of Catastrophe,” describes how history served...
Our Mortuary Conventions
Jill Lepore writes about them in the October issue of The New York. As the subtitle of her piece notes, “Our mortuary conventions reveal a lot about our relation to the past.” Here is a taste: There are only so many...
The Culture of Life
It is time to bring Pope Francis’s visit to bear on what happened in Oregon on Thursday. No one seems to be making the obvious connection between the Pope’s message to America last week and the problem of gun violence...
The Author’s Corner with Terri Snyder
Terri Snyder is Professor of American Studies at California State University, Fullerton. This interview is based on her latest book The Power to Die: Slavery and Suicide in British North America (University of Chicago Press, 2015). JF: What led you to write...
Obituary of the Day
I don’t know if this is real or not, but it is certainly funny. From the Delaware Cape Gazette Here are some highlights: Walter George Bruhl Jr. of Newark and Dewey Beach is a dead person; he is no more; […]
Wilfred McClay on Medicine, Limits, and Death
You should be reading the stuff that Wilfred McClay writes. He is one of the best cultural critics writing today. If your new to McClay, start with his Merle Curti Award-winning book The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America....
The Attempt to Bring George Washington Back to Life
Here is a post for all of the Messiah College students headed to Mount Vernon on Saturday as part of the History Club field trip. Over at the Mount Vernon website, Mary Thompson has a very interesting piece on Dr....
Remembering the Dead on Independence Day
Richard Kauffman, the book review editor at The Christian Century, feels “out of step with the rest of American culture” on the Fourth of July. I will let him explain: The fourth of July joins Memorial Day and Veterans day...
Love and Death on the Wrecking Ball Tour
Joan Walsh offers us a view from the “pit” on Springsteen’s recent stop in San Jose. Her piece in Salon is a thoughtful reflection on the role that death has played in this Springsteen tour–from Clarence and Danny to Springsteen’s...