The American Way of Death Revisited

by Jessica Mitford

In November 1963, three months after the first edition of this book was published, it became once more the unhappy task of presidential aides to supervise the obsequies of a president. Two writers give particulars of negotiations with undertakers in Dallas and Washington over arrangements for John F. Kennedy’s funeral. In Robert Kennedy and His Times (Houghton Mifflin, 1978), Arthur Schlesinger describes RFK’s arrival at Bethesda Hospital: There were so many details. The funeral home wanted to know how grand the coffin should be. “I was influenced by … that girl’s book on (burial) expenses … Jessica Mitford (The American Way of Death).… I remember making the decision based on Jessica Mitford’s book.… I remember thinking about it afterward, about whether I was cheap or what I was, and I remembered thinking about how difficult it must be for everybody making that kind of decision.”