The Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson

The Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson

A light-hearted look at the history and practice of "the ultimate human-interest story," the obituary.

"What a wonderful surprise--a charming, lyrical book about the men and women who write obituaries. The Dead Beat is sly, droll, and completely winning."-- David Halberstam

Where can readers celebrate the life of the pharmacist who moonlighted as a spy, the genius behind Sea Monkeys, the school lunch lady who spent her evenings as a ballroom hostess? The obituary page, of course. Enthralled by these fascinating former lives, Marilyn Johnson tumbled into the little known world of the obituary page to find out what made it so compelling. She sought out the best obits in the English language, and chased the people who spent their lives writing about the dead. Surveying Internet chat rooms, surviving a mass gathering of obituarists, and making the pilgrimage to London to savor the most caustic and literate obits of all, she leads us into the cult and culture behind this fascinating segment of our daily news.

Marilynn S. Johnson (Ph.D., New York University) is a professor of history and chair of the history department at Boston College. Dr. Johnson's research interests center on urban, immigration, and western history. Her most recent book, Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City (Beacon Press, 2003) explored the history of police brutality from the mid-nineteenth to late 20th century. Her previous book, The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II, (University of California Press, 1993) won the Sierra Prize from the Western Association of Women's Historians. Currently, she is working on a history of new immigrants in Boston from 1965 to the present.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780060758752
ISBN 10	0060758759
Title	The Dead Beat
Author	Marilyn Johnson
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Year published	2006-02-28
Number of pages	256
Prizes	Runner-up for Discover Great New Writers (Nonfiction) 2006
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.