Over Your Dead Body: The History and Future of How we Deal with the Dead by Robert Connolly (Epub)

Description

Over Your Dead Body is about the history and future of how we deal with the dead: everything about death, funerals and what happens to the body afterwards. It features vivid personal experiences of the business of death, but also the science, history, and ecology of death – what undertakers do, their curious obsession with embalming, what people did before undertakers, new high-tech replacements for burial and cremation, plus DIY and Green funerals.

It takes in the science of death and caring for the dead, the after-death existence of pharoahs, kings and dictators, underworld and gangland connections with the funeral trade and how 20,000 people in post-communist Poland were murdered because they were worth more dead than alive, and why we wear black at funerals.

The narrative is peopled throughout with bizarre characters who cross over between the death business and the the worlds of medicine, warfare, literature, crime, religion and big business, some of them prominent figures in history. There is also, surprisingly often, humour.

User’s Reviews

Robert Connolly was born in Liverpool and lived in Australia as a child. He is an artist by training and a graduate of the Royal College of Art, and has worked mainly as a curator and organiser of exhibitions; excepting interludes as a civil servant (eating lunch at the same table as serial murderer Dennis Nilsen), working for an American construction company building Canary Wharf in London, and of course, in the funeral industry. As a performance artist (think Yoko Ono, Gilbert & George) he beat Lady Gaga to it by 31 years by wearing a suit made of meat at the Slade School of Art postgraduate private view in 1979: http: //edibleguest.blogspot.co.uk He currently runs an arts charity that provides studio space for artists in London, and divides his time between there and Oslo. –This text refers to the paperback edition.

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ Great easy read with humor!

⭐ Author is constantly side trackedBook is very messy and a bit all over the placeWouldn’t recommend

⭐ Well written and decent book.

⭐ This book will tell you everything you need to know about what they’ll do to your remains when you slough off that mortal coil. Of course, dead bodies have a long history, and Robert Connolly has done some meticulous research into how the grim trade decorated and disposed of our corpses in the past. And the unseemly things they did before burying them. But his first-hand experience in the funeral trade combined with his ready wit and smooth prose make this book a treasure that you could take to the grave…

⭐ This is a fascinating book full of facts and insights about the reality, rites, rituals and evolving history of ‘how we deal with the dead’, the author having first hand experience of having been an undertaker. There is a rich seam of black comedy that some may find borders on the disrespectful’ .On occasions this is simply the sense of humour of the deceased playing out, or it reads as a light hearted approach to balance what might otherwise seem macabre. Overall the gritty witty laconic honesty lays bare this all too taboo subject, and I found this very refreshing .

⭐ It really IS the book that everyone must read, for obvious reasons, as it’s the one subject that unites us all, in the end. Lifting the (coffin) lid on what goes on behind the scenes, and what we should, and shouldn’t expect to happen to us once we have ceased to be. I found myself variously laughing out loud and recoiling in horror at this brilliantly handled account of every aspect of the last great taboo. Written from the indisputable standpoint of someone with hands-on experience, a flypaper memory, and a knack for sniffing out the facts akin to that of a 70s TV detective. What is equally fascinating is that the author, Mr. Connolly is revealed as the kind of refreshingly colourful character that other people write books about; a working class, ex Royal College of Art polymath with a policeman’s bearing. Over Your Dead Body: The History and Future of How we Deal with the Dead

⭐ Loads of history, honest and looks to the future, a great read. Makes you think about what you would like to happen to your body after death and the options and realities.

⭐ Compulsive reading and fascinating subject matter well presented and often humorous recommend

⭐ I loved this book. The subject is something I’d never imagined I’d ever take any interest in. I found Mr Connolly’s book both interesting and amusing, even hilarious at times! I warmly recommend it.

⭐ Extraordinary insight into the world of the body after death! Witty, eclectic and informative.A great read!

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