Recently I purchased the book “Final Resting Places: Orange County’s Dead & Famous” by Michael Thomas Barry, a new up-and-coming author. The book, which was published in January 2010 by Schiffer Publishing, has 224 pages including the bibliography and index. MSRP for this title is $16.99.

The book features over 20 cemeteries located throughout Orange County, California. Luminaries featured in the book include but are not limited to: esteemed western actor John Wayne, former President Richard Nixon, crime victim Nicole Brown Simpson, Sublime front man Brad Nowell, and a host of early Orange County settlers, athletes, entertainment industry big shots, etc. Biographies are concise and to the point, usually lasting a paragraph or two. I personally like it that way because the author covered key topics in such a short time.

What I personally liked about the book was the attention to detail in describing the cemetery histories of various cemeteries. It was a classy touch how each biographical story gets woven into the next story in many cases. I also enjoyed the biographies on personages I’ve never heard of which included the early settlers, many celebrities from the silent era, and others. There are many things I enjoyed about the book but its just too much to add.

Finding the grave sites was made easy with mentioning curbside numbers, grave markers to find, then where go from there in relation to how many markers or rows away the next grave was located.