Nancy Berns is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Drake University in Des Moines. Her teaching and research interests are in areas of grief, death, violence, justice, and social constructionism. She is the author of Framing the Victim: Domestic Violence, Media and Social Problems.

Preface: My Own Tangled Story
Acknowledgments
1. Seeking Closure
2. Closure and Its Tangled Meanings
3. The Walking Wounded and Myth Slayers: Those Who Say There Is No Closure
4. From Embalming to Teddy Bear Urns: Selling Closure in the Twenty-First-Century Death Care Industry
5. The Assurance Business: Creating Worry and Selling Closure
6. Bury the Jerk: Symbolic Death and Mock Vengeance as Relationship Advice
7. Should You Watch an Execution or Forgive a Murderer? Closure Talk and Death Penalty Politics
8. Forgetting versus Remembering: Politics of Mourning, Sacred Space, and Public Memory
9. Framing Grief beyond Closure
Notes
Bibliography
Index