The Mindset List® of American Death and Remembrance

Created by Tom McBride and Ron Nief

For 15 years, the Beloit College Mindset List has captured international attention by providing us a view of what has "always" or "never" been true for a generation of Americans. Now its creators are applying their patented technique to exploring trends in American views of death and mortality. As you have clicked from era to era we hope that you have learned how far our country has come from the days of the American Revolution to today's cyber revolution.

For the past 15 years, the annual Beloit College Mindset List, written by Tom McBride and Ron Nief, has been an internationally anticipated, witty and informative way to understand what has always been “normal” for entering college students. Two years ago they took the Mindset List concept and applied it to ten generations of Americans, looking at each generation through the eyes of its 18-year-olds, in their book, The Mindset Lists of American History: From Typewriters to Text Messages, What 10 Generations of Americans Think Is Normal. Now, for Legacy.com, they present “The Mindset List of American Death and Remembrance” using their patented technique of identifying and expressing what has “always” or “never” been true for a particular generation of Americans. We hope you find the Mindset List of American Death and Remembrance both informative and provocative. Join us as we trace the history of American death and learn what was “normal” for each generation.

Early Americans could not imagine a day when nearly everyone would die in a hospital, or when nearly everyone was literate enough to read tombstone inscriptions, or when condolences could be written on a strange machine that is a combination of typewriter keyboard and TV screen! An idea of “immortality” based on uploading one’s consciousness onto a computer, as “information,” would have been utterly unthinkable.

Ron Nief, left, and Tom McBride