Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca Kristin Norget. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Day of the Dead festivities in Oaxaca, Mexico, in late October and early November have drawn the attention of students of popular culture, tourists, and urban anthropologists, including the author of this work. However, this book goes well beyond an analysis of the Day of the Dead rituals. It is an extensive study of the rituals surrounding death, as well as the symbolic, spiritual, and physical experiences of death, particularly among the poor in urban Oaxaca. To obtain her information, the author did field research between the years 1989 and 1993 in five poor neighborhoods in urban Oaxaca. She personally attended numerous funerals, wakes, and prayer services, and conducted seventy-five open-ended interviews with families on themes tied to death. She also recorded videos and took photographs of family death rituals. The book is divided into three major parts: popular life and rituals in Oaxaca, popular death rites and experiences, and Day of the Dead rituals in poor, urban Oaxaca. In the first chapters of the book she details the history, geography, and social and cultural backgrounds of Oaxaca, particularly of the poor neighborhoods. Her descriptions of the differences among death rituals as practiced by the Mexican Catholic Church and popular practices were especially interesting. Although the new evangelization project of the Catholic Church gave the Oaxacan poor a sense of greater selfdirection and brought more women into leadership roles in Church rituals, it failed to change the strong, local, popular religious beliefs and practices. The author maintains that the strength of popular religion originates from the ever-present religiosity in everyday life which helps lessprivileged citizens of Oaxaca cope with the daily challenges of urban living. This theme of popular religion is continued in part two of the study where the author argues that popular rituals of death mediate tension among social classes and provide possibilities for the poor communities and individuals to renew or recover spiritually and improve themselves morally and physically. Women are given a greater opportunity to play a larger role in the community through rituals of death. Chapter four of the study, an analysis of death rituals in poor neighborhoods of Oaxaca, is particularly insightful. The author contends that death rituals create a moral identity for poor Oaxacan families and individuals. Some of the rituals are Catholic-based, such as confession, the last rites, and the funeral mass, but most are derived from popular beliefs. …