Book excerpt: Eulogies have a long and important history in remembering and commemorating the dead. As Thomas Lynch notes in his Foreword, eulogies are meant "to speak for the ages, to bring homage and appreciation, the final appraisal, the last world and first draft of all future biography." In Great American Catholic Eulogies, Carol DeChant has compiled fifty of the most memorable and instructive eulogies of and by Catholics in America. The eulogies span the American experience, from those who were born before the Declaration of Independence was written to a modern sports legend, from pioneers in social justice, healthcare, and the arts to founders of distinctly American religious order, and from all the varied ethnic cultures who contribute to the great cultural milieu that is the United States.