and not only is the house of diggs my favorite title for a funeral home, but this ad caught my eye. and i thought, to serve the living, and that was the whole argument of the book ultimately. the main argument i'm trying to make is the ways in which these funeral directors serve the living was far important than the ways they bury the dead. and you can watch throughout time that line of why it was so significant. so that's the title of the book, yeah. >> host: and the painting on the front of your book? >> guest: um, the painting on the front of the book, a lesser-known jacob lawrence painting, and it's a cityscape from harlem. and what most people don't notice, actually, a prominent couple there on the front, and if you can see, there's like three little dots next to them, the ghost of the dead person. people don't actually notice that, but it's a scene of a funeral in harlem, and what was striking to me was the spirit of the dead person is present in the painting, and that also kind of captured what i say about african-american cosmology about death and the belief in african-ameri