Purified by Fire (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Stephen Prothero
- First Published: 2001
- Type of Work: Environment, religion, and sociology
- Time of Work: The mid-1800’s to the late 1900’s
- Setting: Washington, Pennsylvania, Boston, New York, and Salt Lake City
- Principal Characters: Colonel Henry Laurens, Reverend Octavius B. Frothingham, Dr. Francis Julius LeMoyne, Baron Joseph Henry Louis Charles De Palm, Henry Steel Olcott, Mrs. Benjamin Pitman, Jessica Mitford, Pope Leo XIII, Pope Paul VI
- Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology
- Subjects: New York, North America or North Americans, United States or Americans, Twentieth century, Nineteenth century, Pennsylvania, Boston, Funeral rites or ceremonies, Massachusetts, Washington, Utah
- Locales: Boston, MA, New York, Pennsylvania, Salt Lake City, UT, Washington
Subjects relating to death in the way that Purified by Fire does often fail to entice imaginative writers or, when they do, may result in books that border on the morbid. Fortunately, Stephen Prothero, an assistant professor of religion at Boston University, has brought to his task of detailing the history of cremation in the United States an admirable energy, wit, and writing ability. Prothero’s earlier book, The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott (1996), provided a logical springboard for Purified by Fire. Olcott, as executor of Baron De...
[The entire page is 1855 words long]
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