Death Is a Verb — sources for the Literacies, in Chicago Manual of Style (18th ed.), bibliography format. Compiled July 2026. Two of the four guides below (the body, technology) are held in reserve while they wait for their writers; their sources are kept here so the ground is already laid.
peer-reviewed scholarly, refereed book authored volume institutional museum, agency, society popular journalism / general audience
Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. book
Green Burial Council. "What Is Green Burial?" Green Burial Council. Accessed July 2026. https://www.greenburialcouncil.org/. institutional
Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. book
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013. See esp. "Learning the Grammar of Animacy." book
National Funeral Directors Association. 2025 NFDA Cremation and Burial Report. Brookfield, WI: NFDA, 2025. U.S. cremation rate projected at 63.4% in 2025, rising to 82.3% by 2045. https://nfda.org/news/media-center/nfda-news-releases/id/9772/americans-choosing-cremation-at-historic-rates-nfda-report-finds. institutional
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by A. D. Melville. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. book
Johnson, Jennifer A. "Populating the Periodic Table: Nucleosynthesis of the Elements." Science 363, no. 6426 (2019): 474–478. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aau9540. peer-reviewed
NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory. "The Chemistry of the Cosmos." Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Accessed July 2026. https://chandra.harvard.edu/chemistry/. institutional
Emsley, John. Nature's Building Blocks: An A–Z Guide to the Elements. New ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. book (source for body-composition percentages, replacing the encyclopedia reference.)
Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. New York: Random House, 1980. book
U.S. Department of Energy. "DOE Explains…Nucleosynthesis." Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy. Accessed July 2026. https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsnucleosynthesis. institutional
"Origin of the Elements." The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review 31 (2022). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00159-022-00146-x. peer-reviewed
U.S. Geological Survey. Mineral Commodity Summaries 2024. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 2024. https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries. institutional (where lithium, cobalt, rare earths, and other metals are mined.)
Royal Society of Chemistry. "Elements in a Smartphone" (periodic-table / element-scarcity resources). Royal Society of Chemistry. Accessed July 2026. https://www.rsc.org/. institutional
Akomolafe, Bayo. These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2017.
Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.
Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016.
Jabr, Ferris. Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life. New York: Random House, 2024.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013.
Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. New York: Random House, 1980.
Death Is a Verb Foundation · Field guide citations, CMOS 18th ed.