Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Illustrations ix
4. Introduction 1
5. Part I. Mortality for the Masses
6. Chapter 1. The Christian Origins of the Vanishing Indian 17
7. Chapter 2. Blood Will Out: Sensationalism, Horror, and the Roots of American Crime Literature 31
8. Chapter 3. A Tale of Two Cities: Epidemics and the Rituals of Death in Eighteenth-Century Boston and Philadelphia 56
9. Part II. The Politics of Death
10. Chapter 4. Death and Satire: Dismembering the Body Politic 71
11. Chapter 5. Immortalizing the Founding Fathers: The Excesses of Public Eulogy 91
12. Chapter 6. The Politics of Tears: Death in the Early American Novel 108
13. Part III. Physical Remains
14. Chapter 7. Major Andre's Exhumation 123
15. Chapter 8. Patriotic Remains: Bones of Contention in the Early Republic 136
16. Chapter 9. A Peculiar Mark of Infamy: Dismemberment, Burial, and Rebelliousness in Slave Societies 149
17. Part IV. After Life
18. Chapter 10. Immortal Messengers: Angels, Gender, and Power in Early America 163
19. Chapter 11. "In the Midst of Life we are in Death": Affliction and Religion in Antebellum New York 176
20. Chapter 12. The Romantic Landscape: Washington Irving, Sleepy Hollow, and the Rural Cemetery Movement 187
21. Notes 205
22. Contributors 247
23. Index 249