The Secret Cemetery

Burial sites have long been recognized as a way to understand past civilizations. Yet, the meanings of our present day cemeteries have been virtually ignored, even though they reveal much about our cultures. Exploring an extraordinarily diverse range of memorial practice - Greek Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish, Roman Catholic and Anglican, as well as the unchurched - The Secret Cemetery is an intriguing study of what these places of death mean to the living. Most of us experience cemeteries at a ritualized moment of loss. What we forget is that these are often places to which we return either as a general space in which to contemplate or as a specific site to be tended. These are also places where different communities can reinforce boundaries and even recreate a sense of homeland. Over time, ritual, artefact and place shape an intensely personal landscape of memory and mourning, a landscape more alive, more actively engaged with than many of the other places we inhabit.

One woman’s struggle to restore an old slave cemetery uncovers centuries-old racism When China Galland visited her childhood hometown in east Texas, she learned of an unmarked cemetery for slaves-Love Cemetery. Her ensuing quest to restore and reclaim the cemetary unearths racial wounds that have never completely healed. Research becomes activism as she organizes a grassroots, interracial committee, made up of local religious leaders and lay people, to work on restoring community access to the cemetery. The author also presents material from the time of slavery and the Reconstruction Era, including stories of “landtakings” (the theft of land from African Americans), and forms of slavery that continued well into the twentieth century. Ultimately Keepers of Love delivers a message of tremendous hope as members of both black and white communities come together to right an historical wrong, and in so doing, discover each other’s common dignity. “Galland captures the struggle to reclaim one small cemetery in Texas with such engrossing drama and personal detail that the story becomes something larger still-a universal struggle to reclaim the ground of Deep Compassion that lies untended in the human heart.”-Sue Monk Kidd

Burial sites have long been recognized as a way to understand past civilizations. Yet, the meanings of our present day cemeteries have been virtually ignored, even though they reveal much about our cultures. Exploring an extraordinarily diverse range of memorial practice - Greek Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish, Roman Catholic and Anglican, as well as the unchurched - The Secret Cemetery is an intriguing study of what these places of death mean to the living. Most of us experience cemeteries at a ritualized moment of loss. What we forget is that these are often places to which we return either as a general space in which to contemplate or as a specific site to be tended. These are also places where different communities can reinforce boundaries and even recreate a sense of homeland. Over time, ritual, artefact and place shape an intensely personal landscape of memory and mourning, a landscape more alive, more actively engaged with than many of the other places we inhabit.

A Disturbed Grave In A Century-Old Cemetery. A Ciphered Message. A Mysterious `Repeater'&Hellip; On A Visit To The Park Street Cemetery In Calcutta, Feluda And His Friends Chance Upon An Old Grave That Has Been Dug Into. Slight Clues Lead Them Into The Heart Of A Mystery That Is Both Complex And Blood-Curdling. When The Jigsaw That Involves A Seance In A Gloomy Old Building, A Singer In A Restaurant, A Ruthless And Rich Collector And A Midnight Vigil At The Graveyard Is Put Together, What Emerges Is One Of The Most Intriguing Mysteries Feluda Has Ever Been Faced With. &Nbsp;

In the spirit of Joseph Mitchell and E. L. Doctorow, a haunting and genre-defying portrait gallery of once-eminent, now half-forgotten New Yorkers buried in the city's largest cemetery Woodlawn Cemetery is a massive necropolis, four hundred immaculately and privately maintained acres in the north Bronx that serve as the final resting place for three hundred thousand New Yorkers. It is a place of startling serenity and architectural distinction as well as cultural and historical significance that nonetheless remains unknown to the majority of people who live in the city. Which is surprising when one learns that its (very) long-term inhabitants include Herman Melville, Duke Ellington, Robert Moses, Fiorello La Guardia, Miles Davis, and dozens of Gilded Age grandeesincluding Goulds and Astorswho were determined to spend eternity with opulence to match their residences while alive. Writer Fred Goodman stumbled upon Woodlawn one day when he wandered off his bicycling path.The Secret Cityis the product of his frankly obsessive researches into the lives of many of the once famed, now forgotten men and women buried there. Featuring nine dramatic episodes, chronologically arranged, each story presents an exceptional individual caught up in a defining or historical moment of New York's social, political, commercial, or artistic life. Readers meet phrenologist and publisher Orson Fowler, ASPCA founder Henry Bergh, Gilded Age railroad magnate Austin Corbin, political satirist Finley Peter Dunne, "Boy Mayor" John Purroy Mitchel, attorney Francis Garvan, sculptor Attilio Piccirilli, Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen, leftist East Harlem Congressman Vito Marcantonio, and pioneering aviatrix Ruth Nichols. Framing and tying together these novelistic tales is the first-person narrative of the author's discovery of Woodlawn and his research.The Secret Cityis, then, an act of resurrectiona way of putting flesh on the anonymous dead, and humanizing and demystifying a city whose fabulous history is, too often, interred with its inhabitants.

This autobiographical novel traces the journey of a woman from her youth in Socialist Eastern Europe to her transplanted life in Montreal, Canada. She is a precocious, thoughtful child, whose early life in Romania is marked by the scarcities of the time and the political games needed to survive, but she is not unhappy. Placed around her family's house are hives--the bees discourage the secret police from visiting too often--and they provide both a childish diversion and an overarching metaphor for departure and home. An elegant, candid book, A Cemetery for Bees is an elegy for childhood, a declaration of francophile love, and a complicated look at who we are, who we were, and where we might find ourselves.

Certain symbols abound in modern Western culture that are instantly recognizable: the cross signifies Christianity, the six-pointed Star of David is revered by Jews, the golden arches frequently means it's time for lunch. Other symbols, however, require a bit of decoding-particularly those found in cemeteries. Cemeteries are virtual encyclopedias of symbolism. Engravings on tombstones, mausoleums and memorials tell us just about everything there is to know about a person- date of birth and death as well as religion, ethnicity, occupation, community interests, and much more. In the fascinating new book Stories in Stone: The Complete Guide to Cemetery Symbolism by noted author Douglas Keister, the secrets of cemetery symbolism are finally revealed. For instance, did you know that it is quite rare to see a sunflower on a tombstone? Did you know that the human foot symbolizes humility and service since it consistently touches the earth? Or the humble sheaf of wheat-while it is often used to denote someone who has lived a long and fruitful life, do you know other meanings it might carry? Stories in Stone provides history along with images of a wide variety of common and not-so-common cemetery symbols, and offers an in-depth examination of stone relics and the personal and intimate details they display-flora and fauna, religious icons, society symbols, and final impressions of how the deceased wished to be remembered. Douglas Keister has created a practical field guide that is compact and portable, perfect for those interested in family histories and genealogical research, and is the only book of its kind that unlocks the language of symbols in a comprehensive and easy-to-understand manner. Douglas Keister has photographed fourteen award-winning, critically acclaimed books (including Red Tile Style: America's Spanish Revival Architecture, The Bungalow: America's Arts & Crafts Home, and Storybook Style: America's Whimsical Homes of the Twenties) earning him the title "America's most noted photographer of historic architecture." He also writes and illustrates magazine articles and contributes photographs and essays to other books, calendars, posters, and greeting cards. Doug lives in Chico, California, and travels frequently to photograph and lecture on historic architecture and photography.

The Prague Cemetery is the #1 international bestselling historical novel from the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco. Nineteenth-century Europe—from Turin to Prague to Paris—abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Masses at night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres. Conspiracies rule history. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat. But what if behind all of these conspiracies, both real and imagined, lay one lone man? “Choreographed by a truth that is itself so strange a novelist need hardly expand on it to produce a wondrous tale... Eco is to be applauded for bringing this stranger-than-fiction truth vividly to life.” —The New York Times