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Historical Death in Medieval England by D.M. Hadley $29.99 / Tempus / 2001 DM Hadley assembles an impressive variety of sources into her survey on death in medieval England. The result is a work that is enlightening, not only on how people died but also on how the living dealt with death. Up until the tenth century, the Anglo-Saxons were known to cremate their dead or bury them in mounds. But the Church, as part of their campaign to Christianize this pagan society, soon put a stop to this, insisting that believers be interred in churchyards. Thereafter, believers sought to have their final resting place as close to the locus of holiness as possible. In this book, Hadley discusses how archaeological excavations of churchyards reveal not only how crowded these "cities of the dead" became but also describes the diseases that they suffered from and their general state of health. She also explains how grave markers and church sculptures show us how the dead wished to be remembered. Finally, she describes how the Black Death overwhelmed Europe, changing not only the social and economic landscape but also how people thought of death. --Ken Mondschein

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