Funerals and burials are part of a billion-dollar enterprise that touches all of us at one point or another. How did we get here? How have we created and filled acres upon acres of land from coast to coast with the earthly remains of countless individuals? (Not to mention the millions of gallons of embalming fluid and cement.) And how are cemeteries relevant places to the living?

Greg Melville takes readers on a tour through some of the United States’s prominent cemeteries and through our nation’s history of how we remember and bury our loved ones. (Or, in some cases, how we bury our sins and our shame.) OVER MY DEAD BODY is full of fascinating trivia notes that enhanced my enjoyment of the book.

For example, did you know that Central Park–built on burial grounds–is “Manhattan’s most active repository for human remains?” Or the role the American Civil War and Abraham Lincoln played in our modern understanding of what cemeteries would be and look like? Or what a California cemetery has to do with the Disneyland theme park?

All of those stories and so many more await you in OVER MY DEAD BODY. It’s a book both educational and very enjoyable.