Author: Harold Schechter
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345499646
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
In the tradition of Mary Roach’s bestselling Stiff and Jessica Mitford’s classic exposé The American Way of Death comes this meticulously researched, refreshingly irreverent, and lavishly illustrated look at death from acclaimed author Harold Schechter. With his trademark fearlessness and bracing sense of humor, Schechter digs deep into a wealth of sources to unearth a treasure trove of surprising facts, amusing anecdotes, practical information, and timeless wisdom about that undiscovered country to which we will all one day travel. Topics include • Death anxiety–is your fear of death normal or off the scale? • You can’t take it with you . . . or can you? Wacky wills and bizarre bequests • The hospice experience–going out in comfort and style • Deathbed and funeral etiquette–how to help the dying and mourn the dead with dignity • Death on demand–why the right-to-die movement may be the next big thing • “Good-bye everybody”–famous last words • The embalmer’s art–all dressed up and nowhere to go • Behind the scenes at your local funeral home • Alternative burial choices–from coral reefs to outer space From the cold, hard facts of death to lessons in the art of dying well, from what happens in the body’s last living moments to what transpires in the ground or in the furnace, from near-death experiences to speculation on the afterlife, The Whole Death Catalog leaves no gravestone unturned.
The Whole Death Catalog
Author: Harold Schechter
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345499646
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
In the tradition of Mary Roach’s bestselling Stiff and Jessica Mitford’s classic exposé The American Way of Death comes this meticulously researched, refreshingly irreverent, and lavishly illustrated look at death from acclaimed author Harold Schechter. With his trademark fearlessness and bracing sense of humor, Schechter digs deep into a wealth of sources to unearth a treasure trove of surprising facts, amusing anecdotes, practical information, and timeless wisdom about that undiscovered country to which we will all one day travel. Topics include • Death anxiety–is your fear of death normal or off the scale? • You can’t take it with you . . . or can you? Wacky wills and bizarre bequests • The hospice experience–going out in comfort and style • Deathbed and funeral etiquette–how to help the dying and mourn the dead with dignity • Death on demand–why the right-to-die movement may be the next big thing • “Good-bye everybody”–famous last words • The embalmer’s art–all dressed up and nowhere to go • Behind the scenes at your local funeral home • Alternative burial choices–from coral reefs to outer space From the cold, hard facts of death to lessons in the art of dying well, from what happens in the body’s last living moments to what transpires in the ground or in the furnace, from near-death experiences to speculation on the afterlife, The Whole Death Catalog leaves no gravestone unturned.
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345499646
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
In the tradition of Mary Roach’s bestselling Stiff and Jessica Mitford’s classic exposé The American Way of Death comes this meticulously researched, refreshingly irreverent, and lavishly illustrated look at death from acclaimed author Harold Schechter. With his trademark fearlessness and bracing sense of humor, Schechter digs deep into a wealth of sources to unearth a treasure trove of surprising facts, amusing anecdotes, practical information, and timeless wisdom about that undiscovered country to which we will all one day travel. Topics include • Death anxiety–is your fear of death normal or off the scale? • You can’t take it with you . . . or can you? Wacky wills and bizarre bequests • The hospice experience–going out in comfort and style • Deathbed and funeral etiquette–how to help the dying and mourn the dead with dignity • Death on demand–why the right-to-die movement may be the next big thing • “Good-bye everybody”–famous last words • The embalmer’s art–all dressed up and nowhere to go • Behind the scenes at your local funeral home • Alternative burial choices–from coral reefs to outer space From the cold, hard facts of death to lessons in the art of dying well, from what happens in the body’s last living moments to what transpires in the ground or in the furnace, from near-death experiences to speculation on the afterlife, The Whole Death Catalog leaves no gravestone unturned.
The Whole Death Catalog
Author: Harold Schechter
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345512510
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
In the tradition of Mary Roach’s bestselling Stiff and Jessica Mitford’s classic exposé The American Way of Death comes this meticulously researched, refreshingly irreverent, and lavishly illustrated look at death from acclaimed author Harold Schechter. With his trademark fearlessness and bracing sense of humor, Schechter digs deep into a wealth of sources to unearth a treasure trove of surprising facts, amusing anecdotes, practical information, and timeless wisdom about that undiscovered country to which we will all one day travel. Topics include • Death anxiety–is your fear of death normal or off the scale? • You can’t take it with you . . . or can you? Wacky wills and bizarre bequests • The hospice experience–going out in comfort and style • Deathbed and funeral etiquette–how to help the dying and mourn the dead with dignity • Death on demand–why the right-to-die movement may be the next big thing • “Good-bye everybody”–famous last words • The embalmer’s art–all dressed up and nowhere to go • Behind the scenes at your local funeral home • Alternative burial choices–from coral reefs to outer space From the cold, hard facts of death to lessons in the art of dying well, from what happens in the body’s last living moments to what transpires in the ground or in the furnace, from near-death experiences to speculation on the afterlife, The Whole Death Catalog leaves no gravestone unturned.
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345512510
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
In the tradition of Mary Roach’s bestselling Stiff and Jessica Mitford’s classic exposé The American Way of Death comes this meticulously researched, refreshingly irreverent, and lavishly illustrated look at death from acclaimed author Harold Schechter. With his trademark fearlessness and bracing sense of humor, Schechter digs deep into a wealth of sources to unearth a treasure trove of surprising facts, amusing anecdotes, practical information, and timeless wisdom about that undiscovered country to which we will all one day travel. Topics include • Death anxiety–is your fear of death normal or off the scale? • You can’t take it with you . . . or can you? Wacky wills and bizarre bequests • The hospice experience–going out in comfort and style • Deathbed and funeral etiquette–how to help the dying and mourn the dead with dignity • Death on demand–why the right-to-die movement may be the next big thing • “Good-bye everybody”–famous last words • The embalmer’s art–all dressed up and nowhere to go • Behind the scenes at your local funeral home • Alternative burial choices–from coral reefs to outer space From the cold, hard facts of death to lessons in the art of dying well, from what happens in the body’s last living moments to what transpires in the ground or in the furnace, from near-death experiences to speculation on the afterlife, The Whole Death Catalog leaves no gravestone unturned.
The Essential Whole Earth Catalog
Author:
Publisher: Main Street Books
ISBN: 9780385236416
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 420
Book Description
Taking its place beside the instant classic bestseller The Whole Earth Catalog, this new, practical, comprehensive and profusely illustrated guide will prove invaluable to all consumers looking for a quick, efficient route to the very best information. Over 1,000 black-and-white illustrations.
Publisher: Main Street Books
ISBN: 9780385236416
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 420
Book Description
Taking its place beside the instant classic bestseller The Whole Earth Catalog, this new, practical, comprehensive and profusely illustrated guide will prove invaluable to all consumers looking for a quick, efficient route to the very best information. Over 1,000 black-and-white illustrations.
Ecopiety
Author: Sarah McFarland Taylor
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479891312
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Book Description
Tackles a human problem we all share―the fate of the earth and our role in its future Confident that your personal good deeds of environmental virtue will save the earth? The stories we encounter about the environment in popular culture too often promote an imagined moral economy, assuring us that tiny acts of voluntary personal piety, such as recycling a coffee cup, or purchasing green consumer items, can offset our destructive habits. No need to make any fundamental structural changes. The trick is simply for the consumer to buy the right things and shop our way to a greener future. It’s time for a reality check. Ecopiety offers an absorbing examination of the intersections of environmental sensibilities, contemporary expressions of piety and devotion, and American popular culture. Ranging from portrayals of environmental sin and virtue such as the eco-pious depiction of Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey, to the green capitalism found in the world of mobile-device “carbon sin-tracking” software applications, to the socially conscious vegetarian vampires in True Blood, the volume illuminates the work pop culture performs as both a mirror and an engine for the greening of American spiritual and ethical commitments. Taylor makes the case that it is not through a framework of grim duty or obligation, but through one of play and delight, that we may move environmental ideals into substantive action.
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479891312
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Book Description
Tackles a human problem we all share―the fate of the earth and our role in its future Confident that your personal good deeds of environmental virtue will save the earth? The stories we encounter about the environment in popular culture too often promote an imagined moral economy, assuring us that tiny acts of voluntary personal piety, such as recycling a coffee cup, or purchasing green consumer items, can offset our destructive habits. No need to make any fundamental structural changes. The trick is simply for the consumer to buy the right things and shop our way to a greener future. It’s time for a reality check. Ecopiety offers an absorbing examination of the intersections of environmental sensibilities, contemporary expressions of piety and devotion, and American popular culture. Ranging from portrayals of environmental sin and virtue such as the eco-pious depiction of Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey, to the green capitalism found in the world of mobile-device “carbon sin-tracking” software applications, to the socially conscious vegetarian vampires in True Blood, the volume illuminates the work pop culture performs as both a mirror and an engine for the greening of American spiritual and ethical commitments. Taylor makes the case that it is not through a framework of grim duty or obligation, but through one of play and delight, that we may move environmental ideals into substantive action.
Cause of Death
Author: Jack Mingo
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416592334
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 477
Book Description
FACE IT. WE CAN GO ANYTIME. BUT IN SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS! Death becomes you, and it's just another fact of life explored in Cause of Death, a revealing abundance of startling data, false perceptions, bizarre fallacies, and some totally unexpected statistics about how, why, when, and where we all bite the dust, check out, buy the farm, kick the bucket, and all those other euphemisms for perishing after falling out of bed (roughly 1,800 fitful sleepers a year). It also answers questions most people never even consider (but should): Do crocodiles kill more people than alligators? Are we more prone to commit suicide or murder? How many still die from leprosy? Does salmonella have anything to do with salmon? Can the condition of your toenails predict your mortality? What's the connection between kitty litter and brain damage? Has irony ever killed anyone?* Disease, accidents, occupational hazards, poisons, plagues, infections, murder, fauna and fungi, insect bites, war, and even bison. What's the most popular killer of the decade? The rarest? How many deaths per year by age? Gender? Location? Time of day? Stupidity? All this and more in a book you really shouldn't be living without. * Yes! While experimenting with the safe preservation of food in snow, Sir Francis Bacon caught a cold and died.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416592334
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 477
Book Description
FACE IT. WE CAN GO ANYTIME. BUT IN SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS! Death becomes you, and it's just another fact of life explored in Cause of Death, a revealing abundance of startling data, false perceptions, bizarre fallacies, and some totally unexpected statistics about how, why, when, and where we all bite the dust, check out, buy the farm, kick the bucket, and all those other euphemisms for perishing after falling out of bed (roughly 1,800 fitful sleepers a year). It also answers questions most people never even consider (but should): Do crocodiles kill more people than alligators? Are we more prone to commit suicide or murder? How many still die from leprosy? Does salmonella have anything to do with salmon? Can the condition of your toenails predict your mortality? What's the connection between kitty litter and brain damage? Has irony ever killed anyone?* Disease, accidents, occupational hazards, poisons, plagues, infections, murder, fauna and fungi, insect bites, war, and even bison. What's the most popular killer of the decade? The rarest? How many deaths per year by age? Gender? Location? Time of day? Stupidity? All this and more in a book you really shouldn't be living without. * Yes! While experimenting with the safe preservation of food in snow, Sir Francis Bacon caught a cold and died.
The A–Z of Death and Dying
Author: Michael John Brennan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440803447
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 464
Book Description
This engaging and informative resource provides readers with an understanding of the social, cultural, and historical influences that shape our encounters with death, dying, and bereavement—a universal experience across humanity. Written in an engaging and accessible style by leading international scholars and practitioners from within the field of death and bereavement studies, this book will have broad appeal, providing in a single volume insights from some of the key thinkers within the interdisciplinary field of death, dying, and bereavement. Its approximately 200 entries will serve as useful starting points for those new to the topic and will be informative to those already acquainted with some of the core concepts and ideas within this burgeoning field of inquiry. This encyclopedia will serve as an essential resource for high school and undergraduate students, those engaged in independent research, and professionals whose work involves caring for the dead, dying, and bereaved. It will also be of great interest to general readers intrigued by the social, medical, and cultural dimensions to human mortality. Underscored by the inescapable biological certainties that affect us all, The A–Z of Death and Dying offers a highly relevant examination of the social and historical variation in the rituals, practices, and beliefs surrounding the end of life.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440803447
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 464
Book Description
This engaging and informative resource provides readers with an understanding of the social, cultural, and historical influences that shape our encounters with death, dying, and bereavement—a universal experience across humanity. Written in an engaging and accessible style by leading international scholars and practitioners from within the field of death and bereavement studies, this book will have broad appeal, providing in a single volume insights from some of the key thinkers within the interdisciplinary field of death, dying, and bereavement. Its approximately 200 entries will serve as useful starting points for those new to the topic and will be informative to those already acquainted with some of the core concepts and ideas within this burgeoning field of inquiry. This encyclopedia will serve as an essential resource for high school and undergraduate students, those engaged in independent research, and professionals whose work involves caring for the dead, dying, and bereaved. It will also be of great interest to general readers intrigued by the social, medical, and cultural dimensions to human mortality. Underscored by the inescapable biological certainties that affect us all, The A–Z of Death and Dying offers a highly relevant examination of the social and historical variation in the rituals, practices, and beliefs surrounding the end of life.
Death and Dying
Author: Diane Andrews Henningfeld
Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC
ISBN: 0737749318
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
This book offers a collection of twenty-three essays that examines viewpoints on death and dying from around the world. Causes of death are examined, including increases in mortality due to AIDS in Africa, drug abuse in Scotland, and suicide in Ireland. Chapters discuss access to palliative end-of-life care and assisted suicide. Readers will evaluate the influences of the world's major religions and their beliefs, traditions, and rituals surrounding death. They will also learn about funeral practices throughout the world. Essay sources include Open Society Institute, A.P. Online, New Vision, Hiroko Nakata, Francesca Crippa Floriani, JoAnne M. Youngblut, and Dorothy Brooten.
Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC
ISBN: 0737749318
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
This book offers a collection of twenty-three essays that examines viewpoints on death and dying from around the world. Causes of death are examined, including increases in mortality due to AIDS in Africa, drug abuse in Scotland, and suicide in Ireland. Chapters discuss access to palliative end-of-life care and assisted suicide. Readers will evaluate the influences of the world's major religions and their beliefs, traditions, and rituals surrounding death. They will also learn about funeral practices throughout the world. Essay sources include Open Society Institute, A.P. Online, New Vision, Hiroko Nakata, Francesca Crippa Floriani, JoAnne M. Youngblut, and Dorothy Brooten.
Death Watch
Author: Gerald Stern
Publisher: Trinity University Press
ISBN: 1595347852
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 121
Book Description
In Death Watch, the National Book Award-winning poet Gerald Stern uses powerful prose to sift through personal and prophetic history and contemplate his own mortality. Characteristically audacious, uncompromising, funny, and iconoclastic, Stern looks back at his life and forward in time to how his story will play out. Wrestling with his identity in Judaism, he explores how his name was uprooted from its origins, as so much of his life will be willfully disrupted from the expectations of his parents and the norms of a predictable path. Stern recounts his life, itself “a grand digression,” which takes him from Pittsburgh, to the Army, to Paris on the GI Bill, and back to the United States, where he immerses himself in the literary culture around him. Stern’s early and traumatic loss of his older sister provides the occasion to imagine what her life might have been, and he revels in his past love affairs, the many women beloved in his life. He recollects books that occupy his recent reading—the work of W.G. Sebald, Blaise Cendrars, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline—and how memory is always at the heart of literary accomplishment and what creates the staying power of great literature. Death Watch is as an account of a beloved poet's final journey; a vivid, passionate, and, at times, whimsical look at the gamble of living life to its fullest, choosing the life of a poet, philosopher, prophet, lover, radical, and perpetual troublemaker.
Publisher: Trinity University Press
ISBN: 1595347852
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 121
Book Description
In Death Watch, the National Book Award-winning poet Gerald Stern uses powerful prose to sift through personal and prophetic history and contemplate his own mortality. Characteristically audacious, uncompromising, funny, and iconoclastic, Stern looks back at his life and forward in time to how his story will play out. Wrestling with his identity in Judaism, he explores how his name was uprooted from its origins, as so much of his life will be willfully disrupted from the expectations of his parents and the norms of a predictable path. Stern recounts his life, itself “a grand digression,” which takes him from Pittsburgh, to the Army, to Paris on the GI Bill, and back to the United States, where he immerses himself in the literary culture around him. Stern’s early and traumatic loss of his older sister provides the occasion to imagine what her life might have been, and he revels in his past love affairs, the many women beloved in his life. He recollects books that occupy his recent reading—the work of W.G. Sebald, Blaise Cendrars, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline—and how memory is always at the heart of literary accomplishment and what creates the staying power of great literature. Death Watch is as an account of a beloved poet's final journey; a vivid, passionate, and, at times, whimsical look at the gamble of living life to its fullest, choosing the life of a poet, philosopher, prophet, lover, radical, and perpetual troublemaker.
I, Death
Author: Mark Leslie
Publisher: EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
ISBN: 1770531203
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
It’s not “boy meets girl, boy loses girl,” but rather “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy’s friends begin dropping like flies.” - Peter O’Mallick isn’t just having a bad day; he’s having a bad life.It’s bad enough when your girlfriend suddenly casts you a cold shoulder, your grades are slipping and those around you no longer understand what it’s like to walk in your shoes; but walking around with the innate power to end lives—something Peter begins to realize he has had since birth—takes the angst to a whole new level.And Hamlet thought he had it bad.Encouraged by his guidance counsellor, the suicidal seventeen year old begins to blog about his experiences in order to try to understand this power and himself. The self-directed therapy helps, and strangers who follow his online story virtually befriend him, as it appears that his curse is mostly limited to those he is in close contact with.However, there is one stranger secretly following his story who isn’t there to understand, help or cheer him on; just as Peter begins to understand that being born as a harbinger for death might actually be a blessing rather than a curse, this stranger is intent on finding a way to use Peter’s power for nefarious purposes.
Publisher: EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
ISBN: 1770531203
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
It’s not “boy meets girl, boy loses girl,” but rather “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy’s friends begin dropping like flies.” - Peter O’Mallick isn’t just having a bad day; he’s having a bad life.It’s bad enough when your girlfriend suddenly casts you a cold shoulder, your grades are slipping and those around you no longer understand what it’s like to walk in your shoes; but walking around with the innate power to end lives—something Peter begins to realize he has had since birth—takes the angst to a whole new level.And Hamlet thought he had it bad.Encouraged by his guidance counsellor, the suicidal seventeen year old begins to blog about his experiences in order to try to understand this power and himself. The self-directed therapy helps, and strangers who follow his online story virtually befriend him, as it appears that his curse is mostly limited to those he is in close contact with.However, there is one stranger secretly following his story who isn’t there to understand, help or cheer him on; just as Peter begins to understand that being born as a harbinger for death might actually be a blessing rather than a curse, this stranger is intent on finding a way to use Peter’s power for nefarious purposes.
The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books
Author: Edward Wilson-Lee
Publisher: Scribner
ISBN: 1982111402
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416
Book Description
This impeccably researched and “adventure-packed” (The Washington Post) account of the obsessive quest by Christopher Columbus’s son to create the greatest library in the world is “the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters” (NPR) and offers a vivid picture of Europe on the verge of becoming modern. At the peak of the Age of Exploration, Hernando Colón sailed with his father Christopher Columbus on his final voyage to the New World, a journey that ended in disaster, bloody mutiny, and shipwreck. After Columbus’s death in 1506, eighteen-year-old Hernando sought to continue—and surpass—his father’s campaign to explore the boundaries of the known world by building a library that would collect everything ever printed: a vast holding organized by summaries and catalogues; really, the first ever database for the exploding diversity of written matter as the printing press proliferated across Europe. Hernando traveled extensively and obsessively amassed his collection based on the groundbreaking conviction that a library of universal knowledge should include “all books, in all languages and on all subjects,” even material often dismissed: ballads, erotica, news pamphlets, almanacs, popular images, romances, fables. The loss of part of his collection to another maritime disaster in 1522, set off the final scramble to complete this sublime project, a race against time to realize a vision of near-impossible perfection. “Magnificent…a thrill on almost every page” (The New York Times Book Review), The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books is a window into sixteenth-century Europe’s information revolution, and a reflection of the passion and intrigues that lie beneath our own insatiable desires to bring order to the world today.
Publisher: Scribner
ISBN: 1982111402
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416
Book Description
This impeccably researched and “adventure-packed” (The Washington Post) account of the obsessive quest by Christopher Columbus’s son to create the greatest library in the world is “the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters” (NPR) and offers a vivid picture of Europe on the verge of becoming modern. At the peak of the Age of Exploration, Hernando Colón sailed with his father Christopher Columbus on his final voyage to the New World, a journey that ended in disaster, bloody mutiny, and shipwreck. After Columbus’s death in 1506, eighteen-year-old Hernando sought to continue—and surpass—his father’s campaign to explore the boundaries of the known world by building a library that would collect everything ever printed: a vast holding organized by summaries and catalogues; really, the first ever database for the exploding diversity of written matter as the printing press proliferated across Europe. Hernando traveled extensively and obsessively amassed his collection based on the groundbreaking conviction that a library of universal knowledge should include “all books, in all languages and on all subjects,” even material often dismissed: ballads, erotica, news pamphlets, almanacs, popular images, romances, fables. The loss of part of his collection to another maritime disaster in 1522, set off the final scramble to complete this sublime project, a race against time to realize a vision of near-impossible perfection. “Magnificent…a thrill on almost every page” (The New York Times Book Review), The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books is a window into sixteenth-century Europe’s information revolution, and a reflection of the passion and intrigues that lie beneath our own insatiable desires to bring order to the world today.