One book I would recommend on the subject of death and its place in society is The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. Although it uses a Freudian (or rather, Rankian) foundation you can appreciate its thinking and conclusions without buying into that whole framework. Its concept of individual "immortality projects" (which are exactly what they sound like) is especially helpful.
Please excuse any grammar and/or spelling mistakes since these were written very quickly on a cell phone keyboard.
P.S.: To feint: please fix your site. Trying to publish material on Pen.io under an the custom URL "tdod-notes" I got someone else's page and couldn't even go back to edit what I had posted. Also, using a custom URL "tdod" didn't work at first, and I couldn't change the title to "Partial notes for Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death" afterwards. It seems like the safest way to use the site now is to create a short "asdf" post and then edit it to add the content.
Here's part of the notes I took while reading it:
http://tdod.pen.io/
Please excuse any grammar and/or spelling mistakes since these were written very quickly on a cell phone keyboard.
P.S.: To feint: please fix your site. Trying to publish material on Pen.io under an the custom URL "tdod-notes" I got someone else's page and couldn't even go back to edit what I had posted. Also, using a custom URL "tdod" didn't work at first, and I couldn't change the title to "Partial notes for Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death" afterwards. It seems like the safest way to use the site now is to create a short "asdf" post and then edit it to add the content.