A Study of the Intellectual and Material Culture of Death in Nineteenth-Century America (Studies in American History (Lewiston, N.Y.), V. 45.)

While the study of American death culture is not itself anew, Dr. Steiner's book uses an American Studies approach to synthesize existing literature in the field while applying a new interpretive framework to the subject. He sees the mid-nineteenth century understanding of death as emerging out of the radical democratic culture of the Jacksonian period with its passionate, but also at times contradictory commitments to majority rule, equal rights, and individualism.