| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Robert V. Wells. Facing the "King of Terrors": Death and Society in an American Community, 1750–1990. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2000. Pp. xiv, 301. $44.95.

In the preface to this book, Robert V. Wells wonders why someone would choose to study death and then remarks on the scant attention it has received from historians, whose very livelihood depends on resurrecting the dead. They are, in his own words, "curiously uninterested" in the attitudes and practices surrounding death—attitudes and practices that express, in a variety of cultural and social forms, core values operating in any given community (p. xi). This naturally leads him to a more pertinent question: "how does one avoid a topic so central to human existence" (p. xi)? 1

French historian Philippe Ariès put death on the historical map, so to speak, with his impressive survey of changing attitudes toward death in the West, but Americans have been slow to see the value of investigating this particular subject. When American historians do explore the terrain, however, they often produce some of the most refreshing and fascinating studies in American social, cultural, and religious history. Wells's book is no exception to this trend, and his contribution to the history of death will be appreciated for years to come. . . .

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