Death Books - Page 2

The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead

David Shields

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 81 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“David Shields has accomplished something here so pure and wide in its implications that I almost think of it as a secular, unsentimental Kahlil Gibran: a textbook for the acceptance of our fate on earth.” —Jonathan Lethem

Mesmerized—at times unnerved—by his ninety-seven-year-old father’s nearly superhuman vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an investigation of the human physical condition. The result is this exhilarating book: both a personal meditation on mortality and an exploration of flesh-and-blood existence from crib to oblivion—an exploration that paradoxically prompts a renewed and profound appreciation of life.

Shields begins with the facts of birth and childhood, expertly weaving in anecdotal information about himself and his father. As the book proceeds through adolescence, middle age, old age, he juxtaposes biological details with bits of philosophical speculation, cultural history and criticism, and quotations from a wide range of writers and thinkers—from Lucretius to Woody Allen—yielding a magical whole: the universal story of our bodily being, a tender and often hilarious portrait of one family.

A book of extraordinary depth and resonance, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead will move readers to contemplate the brevity and radiance of their own sojourn on earth and challenge them to rearrange their thinking in unexpected and crucial ways.

Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss, Second Edition

Hope Edelman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 104 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A classic bestseller, now newly expanded and updated-the book that first acknowledged "mother loss," a woman's most profoundly life-altering passage

An instant bestseller in both hardcover and paperback, Hope Edelman's Motherless Daughters explores the myriad ways that losing a mother can affect almost every aspect and passage of a woman's life. First published a decade ago, it is still the book that motherless daughters of all ages look to for understanding and comfort and that they press into each other's hands.

Building on interviews with hundreds of mother- loss survivors, this life-affirming book is now newly expanded to reflect the author's personal experience with the continued legacy of mother loss; now married and a mother of young children herself, Edelman better understands how the effects of mother loss change over time and in light of new relationships.

A work of stunning courage and honesty, Motherless Daughters is a must read for the millions of women whose mothers have gone, but whose need for healing, mourning, and mothering remains. It is a timeless classic.

Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon

Michael P. Ghiglieri, Thomas M. Myers

Amazon Price: $15.61 List Price: $22.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Puma Press Amazon Marketplace: 62 new & used starting at $6.50

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 93 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Should be Required Reading 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Although it sounds a bit morbid, this book is a very good read. There is a good mix of entertaining anecdotes and statistical analysis. The authors delve into the root causes and chains of events that have led to the hundreds of deaths in the canyon and really drive home the point that people make the same mistakes over and over and over again. If you are thinking about hiking, backpacking, or rafting in the canyon, I highly reccomend reading this book first - it will help you make the right decisions about your time in the canyon.

Editorial Review:

Gripping accounts of all known fatal mishaps in the most famous of the World's Seven Natural Wonders.

Two veterans of decades of adventuring in Grand Canyon chronicle the first complete and comprehensive history of Canyon misadventures. These episodes span the entire era of visitation from the time of the first river exploration by John Wesley Powell and his crew of 1869 to that of tourists falling off its rims in Y2K.

These accounts of the 550 people who have met untimely deaths in the Canyon set a new high water mark for offering the most astounding array of adventures, misadventures, and life saving lessons published between any two covers. Over the Edge promises to be the most intense yet informative book on Grand Canyon ever written.

How We Die

Sherwin B. Nuland

List Price: $17.00 By: Random House Audio Amazon Marketplace: 16 new & used starting at $7.28

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 67 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

For Physicians and Patients Alike... 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I believe this is a must read book for doctors and patients alike. While not cozy and comforting, it presents the facts in a wholly acceptable and honest manner.

I read this after both of my parents passed away from cancer 10 months apart in an attempt to make some sense of what they endured both mentally and medically. This book provided the answers and a great measure of righteous anger at the attending physicians and their attitudes that somehow they could cure the uncureable right up until the very last moment, depriving everyone of the necessary time to say the things that needed to be said.

This book will tell you that you, as the patient, must seek the truth about your illness as it isn't always handed to you by your physician. For the physician, it teaches how to tell the truth without destroying the time left to terminal patients.

Editorial Review:

There is a vast literature on death and dying, but there are few reliable accounts of the ways in which we die. The intimate accounts of how various diseases take away life offered in How We Die, is not meant to prompt horror or terror but to demythologize the process of dying. Though the avenues of death -- AIDS, cancer, heart attack, Alzheimer's, accident, and stroke -- are common, each of us will die in a way different from any that has gone before. Each one of death's diverse appearances is as distinctive as that singular face we each show during our lives. Behind each death is a story. In How We Die, Sherwin B. Nuland, a surgeon and teacher of medicine, tells some stories of dying that reveal not only why someone dies but how. He offers a portrait of the experience of dying that makes clear the choices that can be made to allow each of us his or her own death.

The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order

Joan Wickersham

Amazon Price: $15.75 List Price: $25.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harcourt Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $12.50

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A powerful and original memoir. 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

All memoirs are about memory; but suicide poses a special challenge. As Joan Wickersham writes: "When you kill yourself, you kill every memory anyone has of you." And later: "If you shoot yourself, you are labeled as a suicide. Your death becomes your definition." The Suicide Index starts when Wickersham's father kills himself; it goes backward in time, exploring his past like a detective; and then it carries us forward to show what this mysterious and destructive act did to her family. The writing is spare, but vivid - every word counts, every scene comes alive. The chapters are arranged alphabetically, in index format. It's a device that gains power as the book proceeds; it gives a shape to all the different stories that Wickersham tells us, and all the different ways she has of telling them. In her book Wickersham has met the challenge of suicide: she has restored her memory of her father, and in some sense restored his life. The Suicide Index is, quite simply, the most powerful and original memoir I've ever read.

Editorial Review:

When you kill yourself, you kill every memory everyone has of you. You’re saying “I’m gone and you can’t even be sure who it is that’s gone, because you never knew me.”

Sixteen years ago, Joan Wickersham’s father shot himself in the head. The father she loved would never have killed himself, and yet he had. His death made a mystery of his entire life. Using an index—that most formal and orderly of structures—Wickersham explores this chaotic and incomprehensible reality. Every bit of family history—marriage, parents, business failures—and every encounter with friends, doctors, and other survivors exposes another facet of elusive truth. Dark, funny, sad, and gripping, at once a philosophical and deeply personal exploration, The Suicide Index is, finally, a daughter’s anguished, loving elegy to her father.

 

(20080624)

Final Exit (Second Edition): The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying

Derek Humphry

List Price: $13.95 By: Dell Amazon Marketplace: 41 new & used starting at $0.99

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 62 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Looks like an important addendum is not included in this, as it is in ERGO's 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This has a discount, but I've read it's important to get the updated addendum info like the helium kit, which does not look like it's included here.

The ERGO site has the addendum included with the book. You can also get the addendum separately.

Editorial Review:

Standing at the center of a heated controversy and sparking national debate, Final Exit has become a crucial handbook for people looking to end their suffering from unbearable pain due to terminal or incurable illness. This careful, concise, and compassionate manual includes:

How to commit suicide with sleeping pills, preferably with the aid of a loved one
A chart listing lethal doses of fourteen drugs
Legal considerations, life insurance, and living wills
Finding the right doctor, hospice care, and pain control
Letters to leave behind and how to write a self-deliverance checklist
Psychological support groups for the dying and suicide hotlines for depression
Plus much more invaluable advice on self-deliverance and assisted suicide

For mature adults opting to end their lives or anyone interested in this controversial and timely topic, Final Exit, the only book of its kind, provides the answers.

Animals and the Afterlife: True Stories of Our Best Friends' Journey Beyond Death

Kim Sheridan

Amazon Price: $11.53 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Hay House Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $9.50

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Life Changing 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book was not only healing but an inspiration that led my husband and I to animal rescue work. Working with local shelters and rescue groups, we provide a final home and end-of-life care for small animals that are too emotionally or physically ill to be successfully adopted into the average household. Our current "furry crew" consists of rabbits, chinchillas, fancy rats, gerbils, a mouse, a dwarf hamster, as well as the resident matriarch, our white-face cockatiel Pheonix.

Editorial Review:

Kim Sheridan grew up with animals as her constant companions. Each time she faced the death of a beloved pet, along with the pain came the same questions, to which she could find no answers. Then, mysterious things began to happen that she couldn’t explain, which led her on an incredible journey to uncover the truth. Along with her own extraordinary experiences, she compiled heartwarming and meaningful true stories of everyday people around the world, and discovered compelling evidence that forever erased her own doubts about an afterlife for animals.

This book provides enormous comfort and reassurance to anyone who has ever cherished a pet, and food for thought for anyone who has ever questioned the place of these beloved creatures in the larger scheme of things, both here on Earth and beyond.

Widow To Widow: Thoughtful, Practical Ideas For Rebuilding Your Life

Genevieve Davis Ginsburg

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

It's ok, what you are feeling 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This book is very helpful to me. It validates all the range of emotions I'm experiencing. Being a widow can feel very lonely at times, and this book is helping me feel less alone, seeing that other women are going through a very similar process. I continue to read and re-read parts of it. I would highly recommend this book.

Bought this for a dear friend ... her favorite 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

When a dear friend recently lost her husband in an accident, I did not have personal experience to relate. I searched Amazon and picked four of the highly rated books to send her hoping at least one would be helpful to her. She enjoyed them all, but called me especially thanking me for this one. She said that, out of all the books, this one was the most practical, helpful book. She said it made her feel that her feelings were "normally abnormal" - meaning that they were very normal feelings for an abnormal, unplanned situation - she said it helped her feel that the immense emotions associated with her loss were not hers alone but were "normal" for such a very difficult situation and that others had survived the grieving process. I told her I would put her thoughts here so others who want to reach out to a friend in a similar situation would feel comfortable purchasing this book. God bless all who have lost their dear companions. Our prayers and thoughts reach out to you.

Editorial Review:

In this remarkably useful guide, widow, author, and therapist Genevieve Davis Ginsburg offers fellow widows-as well as their family and friends-sage advice for coping with the loss of a husband. From learning to travel and eat alone to creating new routines to surviving the holidays and anniversaries that reopen emotional wounds, Widow to Widow walks readers through the challenges of widowhood and encourages them on their path to building a new life.

The Denial of Death

Ernest Becker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Insightful, brilliant, clearly written, easy to digest, hard to stop thinking about 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Ernest Becker was a great summarizer of others ideas. He takes an idea like "How can people be happy when they know they will die?", and then looks at the works of psychologists to find their opinion. The result of his effort is a masterpiece.
Becker writes clearly, gives credit to others, and draws new conclusions by analyzing the insights of his reading. You can understand a majority of the ideas in one reading. But if you're like me, it will move you deeply.
Stop and ponder: One day, you will die. This book delves into how people stay happy, sane and persevering with the only guarantee in our life being the fact that all of it leads to this end.

Editorial Review:

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. In doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates more than twenty years after its writing.

Dying Well

Ira Byock

List Price: $24.95 By: Riverhead Hardcover Amazon Marketplace: 57 new & used starting at $3.49

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

An Exquisite Discussion of End of Life Issues 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is an immensely valuable book for anyone with a friend or family member (or one's own self)dealing with end of life issues. With deeply moving personal stories of patients treated by a hospice physician, the book often reads like a novel. But integrated into these stories is a very important message about the value of the dying process, both to the dying person and his or her loved ones. While not an overtly religious book, the author makes a strong case for hospice care for the dying, including effective pain management and maintaining dignity for the dying person. This becomes a strong refutation of the euthanasia movement.

Many of these stories will create a strong emotional response in the reader, but there is never a maudlin or overly sentimental tone to any of the stories. An incredible amount of wisdom is imparted by the author, and will provide much that can help families working through life and death issues. Particularly valuable are insights on the appropriateness of forgoing treatment, including feeding tubes, the effects of the dying process on the body (including the transition to "other-worldliness" that is often seen in the dying who let go of their attachments to the things of this life), and the reminder that the dying are, in fact, still living. Dealing with physicians, who are trained to "cure disease" versus provide "dying care," is, in itself, reason to read this book.

This is a "must-read" for those who are interested in hospice care issues, who want to be able to have an intelligent conversation about end of life issues in a personal or academic setting, or those who just want to know what it means to die well. The fact that the poignant stories remain in the reader's mind well after they have been read put a human face (so to speak) on the issue. If it can be said (and, many would argue, aptly so) that Americans have an ingrained avoidance of thinking about dying (except to fear it or deny it), a widespread reading of this work will help us to deal with the inevitably of our death more wisely.

Editorial Review:

A doctor who specializes in caring for the dying recounts the stories of his patients and their families in order to illustrate how good medicine can help people face death, resolve conflicts, and facilitate death with clarity and peace.