| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America. By Stephen Prothero. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. xiv, 266 pp. $27.50, ISBN 0-520-20816-1.)

Of the roughly two million Americans who died in 1999, 25 percent were cremated. When modern cremation was first proposed 125 years ago, however, it engendered acrimonious controversy among those who felt it was a heathen custom that threatened American society. Stephen Prothero has written an accessible, engaging history that introduces readers to this important but overlooked cultural shift. 1

The study divides cremation's story into three eras: first, the years from 1874, the date of the first publication advocating cremation, to 1896, when the bitterest controversy had begun to fade; second, from 1896 to 1963, a period of accommodation for advocates who adapted existing death rituals to cremation; finally, the era from 1963 to the present, which is aptly titled "The Boom" as an expanding number of Americans employed the process. 2

Almost half the book details early efforts to promote cremation. Advocates argued it was more sanitary, an outgrowth of the era's public health reforms. Further, it was aesthetically more pleasing. Rev. O. B. Frothingham sermonized, "'the graceful urn' was more beautiful than 'the shapeless mound' and 'white ashes' were preferable to 'the mass of corruption' lying in the grave." Finally, it was less expensive. Prothero argues that cremation advocates wanted to cleanse the physical environment by ridding cities of the miasmatic consequences of burial and to cleanse the social environment by cultivating proper taste among the "dangerous classes." . . .

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