Cover -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Introduction -- PART I. MORTALITY FOR THE MASSES -- 1. The Christian Origins of the Vanishing Indian -- 2. Blood Will Out: Sensationalism, Horror, and the Roots of American Crime Literature -- 3. A Tale of Two Cities: Epidemics and the Rituals of Death in Eighteenth-Century Boston and Philadelphia -- PART II. THE POLITICS OF DEATH -- 4. Death and Satire: Dismembering the Body Politic -- 5. Immortalizing the Founding Fathers: The Excesses of Public Eulogy -- 6. The Politics of Tears: Death in the Early American Novel -- PART III. PHYSICAL REMAINS -- 7. Major André's Exhumation -- 8. Patriotic Remains: Bones of Contention in the Early Republic -- 9. A Peculiar Mark of Infamy: Dismemberment, Burial, and Rebelliousness in Slave Societies -- PART IV. AFTER LIFE -- 10. Immortal Messengers: Angels, Gender, and Power in Early America -- 11. "In the Midst of Life we are in Death": Affliction and Religion in Antebellum New York -- 12. The Romantic Landscape: Washington Irving, Sleepy Hollow, and the Rural Cemetery Movement -- Notes -- List of Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- XYZ.