Digging up the dead

the long version

A funeral closes a life story, and a grave in a cemetery marks its end forever. But what happens when those left behind don't agree about the meaning of that story? Or when that disagreement extends all the way to arguments about the final resting place itself? In a surprising number of cases over the years, that's when people have chosen to grab shovels and start digging.With Digging Up the Dead, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Michael Kammen reveals a treasure trove of fascinating, surprising, and sometimes gruesome stories of exhumation and reburial from throughout American history.