>> 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-american culture that the spirit of the dead and the ancestors are always with us. >> host: dr. smith, when you went to sell this book to a publisher and you said i want to write about african-american funeral homes and their way of death, what was the response you got? >> guest: um, the response at first was skeptical, but when i made the argument and made the connections to my previous work on motown and some of the things we've already mentioned, they were quite intrigued. as i said, i primarily see myself a