An Unavoidable Death

Author : Bradford Morrow,David Shields
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2011-02-21
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780393341171

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The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death by Bradford Morrow,David Shields Pdf

What is death and how does it touch upon life? Twenty writers look for answers. Birth is not inevitable. Life certainly isn't. The sole inevitability of existence, the only sure consequence of being alive, is death. In these eloquent and surprising essays, twenty writers face this fact, among them Geoff Dyer, who describes the ghost bikes memorializing those who die in biking accidents; Jonathan Safran Foer, proposing a new way of punctuating dialogue in the face of a family history of heart attacks and decimation by the Holocaust; Mark Doty, whose reflections on the art-porn movie Bijou lead to a meditation on the intersection of sex and death epitomized by the AIDS epidemic; and Joyce Carol Oates, who writes about the loss of her husband and faces her own mortality. Other contributors include Annie Dillard, Diane Ackerman, Peter Straub, and Brenda Hillman.

Author : Peggy Rohlman Lee
Publisher : Booktango
Page : 389 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2012-08-27
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781468910810

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An Unavoidable Death by Peggy Rohlman Lee Pdf

There's big trouble at County Metro Hospital. Kate Peters has just reported Dr. Timothy O'Rourke for bad practice and she suspects him of murdering his patients. Unfortunately, he is murdered that very night and the evidence in her office points to her as the number one suspect. She enlists the help of her best friend, Jennifer Smythe, Assistant DA to help the two cops assigned to the case, Burt Connors and Eddie Bolinski to clear her name and find the murderer. The suspects keep piling up and Kate is ready to reveal a few secrets of her own, but then someone attempts to kill her. Her friends realize they must act quickly to find the murderer before Kate becomes the next victim.

Author : ERNEST. BECKER
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2020-03-05
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1788164261

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The Denial of Death by ERNEST. BECKER Pdf

Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the 'why' of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie - man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. The book argues that human civilisation is a defence against the knowledge that we are mortal beings. Becker states that humans live in both the physical world and a symbolic world of meaning, which is where our 'immortality project' resides. We create in order to become immortal - to become part of something we believe will last forever. In this way we hope to give our lives meaning.In The Denial of Death, Becker sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates decades after it was written.

Author : Committee on Care at the End of Life,Institute of Medicine
Publisher : National Academies Press
Page : 457 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 1997-10-30
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780309518253

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Approaching Death by Committee on Care at the End of Life,Institute of Medicine Pdf

When the end of life makes its inevitable appearance, people should be able to expect reliable, humane, and effective caregiving. Yet too many dying people suffer unnecessarily. While an "overtreated" dying is feared, untreated pain or emotional abandonment are equally frightening. Approaching Death reflects a wide-ranging effort to understand what we know about care at the end of life, what we have yet to learn, and what we know but do not adequately apply. It seeks to build understanding of what constitutes good care for the dying and offers recommendations to decisionmakers that address specific barriers to achieving good care. This volume offers a profile of when, where, and how Americans die. It examines the dimensions of caring at the end of life: Determining diagnosis and prognosis and communicating these to patient and family. Establishing clinical and personal goals. Matching physical, psychological, spiritual, and practical care strategies to the patient's values and circumstances. Approaching Death considers the dying experience in hospitals, nursing homes, and other settings and the role of interdisciplinary teams and managed care. It offers perspectives on quality measurement and improvement, the role of practice guidelines, cost concerns, and legal issues such as assisted suicide. The book proposes how health professionals can become better prepared to care well for those who are dying and to understand that these are not patients for whom "nothing can be done."

Author : Katie Engelhart
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 283 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2021-03-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781250201478

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The Inevitable by Katie Engelhart Pdf

“A remarkably nuanced, empathetic, and well-crafted work of journalism, [The Inevitable] explores what might be called the right-to-die underground, a world of people who wonder why a medical system that can do so much to try to extend their lives can do so little to help them end those lives in a peaceful and painless way.”—Brooke Jarvis, The New Yorker More states and countries are passing right-to-die laws that allow the sick and suffering to end their lives at pre-planned moments, with the help of physicians. But even where these laws exist, they leave many people behind. The Inevitable moves beyond margins of the law to the people who are meticulously planning their final hours—far from medical offices, legislative chambers, hospital ethics committees, and polite conversation. It also shines a light on the people who help them: loved ones and, sometimes, clandestine groups on the Internet that together form the “euthanasia underground.” Katie Engelhart, a veteran journalist, focuses on six people representing different aspects of the right to die debate. Two are doctors: a California physician who runs a boutique assisted death clinic and has written more lethal prescriptions than anyone else in the U.S.; an Australian named Philip Nitschke who lost his medical license for teaching people how to end their lives painlessly and peacefully at “DIY Death” workshops. The other four chapters belong to people who said they wanted to die because they were suffering unbearably—of old age, chronic illness, dementia, and mental anguish—and saw suicide as their only option. Spanning North America, Europe, and Australia, The Inevitable offers a deeply reported and fearless look at a morally tangled subject. It introduces readers to ordinary people who are fighting to find dignity and authenticity in the final hours of their lives.

Author : Peter J. Adams
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2020-04-06
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780190945008

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Reflecting on the Inevitable by Peter J. Adams Pdf

"Death studies have, over the last twenty years, witnessed a flourishing of research and scholarship particularly in areas such as dying and bereavement, cultural practices and fear of dying. But, despite its importance, a specific focus on the nature of personal mortality has attracted surprisingly little attention. This book breaks new ground by bringing together available ideas and research on the meaning of one's own death. Its content is organized around the question of how an ongoing relationship might be possible when the threat of consciousness coming to an end points to an unthinkable and unspeakable nothingness. The book then argues that, despite this threat, an ongoing relationship with one's own death is still possible by means of conceptual devices that help shape personal mortality into a relatable object. Four of these devices, or 'enabling frames', are examined: essential structures, passionate suffusion, point-of-transition and self-generative process. While each frame conceptualizes mortality differently, they share a capacity to move it from unintelligibility to something we can think and speak about, thereby enabling us to maintain an ongoing engagement. The final chapters explore ways in which pursuing a relationship with our own deaths could become a normal and acceptable activity throughout our lives"--

Author : Neil McNicholas
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 53 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2006-01-01
Category : Death
ISBN : 1860824110

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A Catholic Approach to Dying by Neil McNicholas Pdf

Catholic practice surrounding death and dying.

Author : Angie Schmitt
Publisher : Island Press
Page : 247 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2020-08-27
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781642830835

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Right of Way by Angie Schmitt Pdf

The face of the pedestrian safety crisis looks a lot like Ignacio Duarte-Rodriguez. The 77-year old grandfather was struck in a hit-and-run crash while trying to cross a high-speed, six-lane road without crosswalks near his son’s home in Phoenix, Arizona. He was one of the more than 6,000 people killed while walking in America in 2018. In the last ten years, there has been a 50 percent increase in pedestrian deaths. The tragedy of traffic violence has barely registered with the media and wider culture. Disproportionately the victims are like Duarte-Rodriguez—immigrants, the poor, and people of color. They have largely been blamed and forgotten. In Right of Way, journalist Angie Schmitt shows us that deaths like Duarte-Rodriguez’s are not unavoidable “accidents.” They don’t happen because of jaywalking or distracted walking. They are predictable, occurring in stark geographic patterns that tell a story about systemic inequality. These deaths are the forgotten faces of an increasingly urgent public-health crisis that we have the tools, but not the will, to solve. Schmitt examines the possible causes of the increase in pedestrian deaths as well as programs and movements that are beginning to respond to the epidemic. Her investigation unveils why pedestrians are dying—and she demands action. Right of Way is a call to reframe the problem, acknowledge the role of racism and classism in the public response to these deaths, and energize advocacy around road safety. Ultimately, Schmitt argues that we need improvements in infrastructure and changes to policy to save lives. Right of Way unveils a crisis that is rooted in both inequality and the undeterred reign of the automobile in our cities. It challenges us to imagine and demand safer and more equitable cities, where no one is expendable.

Author : André Klarsfeld,Frédéric Revah
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0801441188

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The Biology of Death by André Klarsfeld,Frédéric Revah Pdf

Why do we die? Do all living creatures share this fate? Is the body's slow degradation with the passage of time unavoidable, or can the secrets of longevity be unlocked? Over the past two decades, scientists studying the workings of genes and cells have uncovered some of the clues necessary to solve these mysteries. In this fascinating and accessible book, two neurobiologists share the often-surprising findings from that research, including the possibility that aging and natural death may not be forever a certainty for most living beings. André Klarsfeld and Frédéric Revah discuss in detail the latest scientific findings and views on death and longevity. They challenge many popular assumptions, such as the idea that the death of individual organisms serves to rejuvenate species or that death and sexual reproduction are necessarily linked. Finally, they describe current experimental approaches to postpone natural death in lower organisms as well as in mammals. Are all organisms that survive until late in life condemned to a "natural" death, as a consequence of aging, even if they live in a well-protected, supportive environment? The variability of the adult life span--from a few hours for some insects to more than a millennium for the sequoia and thirteen times that for certain wild berry bushes--challenges the notion that death is unavoidable. Evolutionary theory helps explain why and how some species have achieved biological mechanisms that seemingly allow them to resist time. Death cannot be understood without looking into cells--the essential building blocks of life. Intriguingly, at the level of cells, death is not always an accident; it is often programmed as an indispensable aspect of life, which benefits the organism as a whole.

Author : Doug Pokorski
Publisher : Templegate Publishers
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : Death
ISBN : 0872432157

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Death Rehearsal by Doug Pokorski Pdf

Author : Sheldon Solomon,Jeff Greenberg,Thomas A. Pyszczynski
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Death
ISBN : 9781400067473

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The Worm at the Core by Sheldon Solomon,Jeff Greenberg,Thomas A. Pyszczynski Pdf

Demonstrates how an unconscious fear of death motivates nearly all human goals, behaviors, and cultures, examining the role of mortality awareness in prompting social unrest and war.

Author : Alain De Botton
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2008-12-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780307491336

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Status Anxiety by Alain De Botton Pdf

“There's no writer alive like de Botton” (Chicago Tribune), and now this internationally heralded author turns his attention to the insatiable human quest for status—a quest that has less to do with material comfort than love. Anyone who’s ever lost sleep over an unreturned phone call or the neighbor’s Lexus had better read Alain de Botton’s irresistibly clear-headed new book, immediately. For in its pages, a master explicator of our civilization and its discontents explores the notion that our pursuit of status is actually a pursuit of love, ranging through Western history and thought from St. Augustine to Andrew Carnegie and Machiavelli to Anthony Robbins. Whether it’s assessing the class-consciousness of Christianity or the convulsions of consumer capitalism, dueling or home-furnishing, Status Anxiety is infallibly entertaining. And when it examines the virtues of informed misanthropy, art appreciation, or walking a lobster on a leash, it is not only wise but helpful.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 376 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 1897
Category : Electronic
ISBN : HARVARD:32044014292056

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Bhagavad-Gîtâ by Anonim Pdf

Author : Adriana Teodorescu
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 450 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2015-01-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781443872980

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Death Representations in Literature by Adriana Teodorescu Pdf

If the academic field of death studies is a prosperous one, there still seems to be a level of mistrust concerning the capacity of literature to provide socially relevant information about death and to help improve the anthropological understanding of how culture is shaped by the human condition of mortality. Furthermore, the relationship between literature and death tends to be trivialized, in the sense that death representations are interpreted in an over-aestheticized manner. As such, this approach has a propensity to consider death in literature to be significant only for literary studies, and gives rise to certain persistent clichés, such as the power of literature to annihilate death. This volume overcomes such stereotypes, and reveals the great potential of literary studies to provide fresh and accurate ways of interrogating death as a steady and unavoidable human reality and as an ever-continuing socio-cultural construction. The volume brings together researchers from various countries – the USA, the UK, France, Poland, New Zealand, Canada, India, Germany, Greece, and Romania – with different academic backgrounds in fields as diverse as literature, art history, social studies, criminology, musicology, and cultural studies, and provides answers to questions such as: What are the features of death representations in certain literary genres? Is it possible to speak of an homogeneous vision of death in the case of some literary movements? How do writers perceive, imagine, and describe their death through their personal diaries, or how do they metabolize the death of the “significant others” through their writings? To what extent does the literary representation of death refer to the extra-fictional, socio-historically constructed “Death”? Is it moral to represent death in children’s literature? What are the differences and similarities between representing death in literature and death representations in other connected fields? Are metaphors and literary representations of death forms of death denial, or, on the contrary, a more insightful way of capturing the meaning of death?

Author : Caitlin Doughty
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2014-09-15
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780393245950

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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty Pdf

"Morbid and illuminating" (Entertainment Weekly)—a young mortician goes behind the scenes of her curious profession. Armed with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre, Caitlin Doughty took a job at a crematory and turned morbid curiosity into her life’s work. She cared for bodies of every color, shape, and affliction, and became an intrepid explorer in the world of the dead. In this best-selling memoir, brimming with gallows humor and vivid characters, she marvels at the gruesome history of undertaking and relates her unique coming-of-age story with bold curiosity and mordant wit. By turns hilarious, dark, and uplifting, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes reveals how the fear of dying warps our society and "will make you reconsider how our culture treats the dead" (San Francisco Chronicle).