Author: Harold Schechter
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345512510
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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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.
Author: Foy Scalf
Publisher: Oriental Institute Press
ISBN: 9781614910381
Category : Book of the dead
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Discover how the ancient Egyptians controlled their immortal destiny! This book, edited by Foy Scalf, explores what the Book of the Dead was believed to do, how it worked, how it was made, and what happened to it.
Author: Jo Dereske
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061734241
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
At last, construction begins on a new library for Bellehaven, a gift of Franklin Harrington, scion of old Bellehaven money, and one of the locally famous Harrington triplets. But when a freak snowstorm hits, Bellehaven is brought to its knees. Not so Miss Helma Zukas who is at her post, dispensing library information, overseeing wayward employees, and soothing a busload of stranded gamblers. Suddenly, an explosion rocks the snowy day, destroying the library site, killing the benefactor and a penny–pinching city finance czar. The snow melts but not trouble. Shockingly, Ms. Moon thrusts the new library project onto Helma. And Helma soon discovers why, uncovering secrets and shady dealings from start to finish – secrets in the library, in the City, and in the Harrington family – secrets worth killing for.
Author: Wesley J. Smith
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1594038562
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
When his teenage son Christopher, brain-damaged in an auto accident, developed a 105-degree fever following weeks of unconsciousness, John Campbell asked the attending physician for help. The doctor refused. Why bother? The boy’s life was effectively over. Campbell refused to accept this verdict. He demanded treatment and threatened legal action. The doctor finally relented. With treatment, Christopher’s temperature—which had eventually reached 107.6 degrees—subsided almost immediately. Soon afterward the boy regained consciousness and was learning to walk again. This story is one of many Wesley J. Smith recounts in his award-winning classic critique of the modern bioethics movement, Culture of Death. In this newly updated edition, Smith chronicles how the threats to the equality of human life have accelerated in recent years, from the proliferation of euthanasia and the Brittany Maynard assisted suicide firestorm, to the potential for “death panels” posed by Obamacare and the explosive Terri Schiavo controversy. Culture of Death reveals how more and more doctors have withdrawn from the Hippocratic Oath and how “bioethicists” influence policy by posing questions such as whether organs may be harvested from the terminally ill and disabled. This is a passionate yet coolly reasoned book about the current crisis in medical ethics by an author who has made “the new thanatology” his consuming interest.
Author: Edward Wilson-Lee
Publisher: Scribner
ISBN: 1982111402
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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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.
Author: University of Chicago. Oriental Institute
Publisher: Oriental Institute Press
ISBN: 9781885923806
Category : Book of the dead
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Hope for life after death is evidenced even in prehistoric times in Upper Egypt. The first written aids for attaining and supporting life in the hereafter were the Pyramid Texts inscribed within royal tombs towards the end of the Old Kingdom. In the Middle Kingdom, many texts were borrowed from the pyramid chambers and mingled with new spells; this new form, which today we call Coffin Texts, was usually written inside coffins. These eventually gave way to what we now know as the Book of the Dead. The collections of spells were usually written on rolls of papyrus, that is, in the form of an Egyptian book. Presented here are seventy Book of the Dead documents housed in the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago. These documents, represented in whole or in part - all Eighteenth Dynasty or later - include seven papyri, three coffins, a shroud, a statuette, three stelae or similar and fifty-five ushabties. This is the first digital reprint of the 1960 publication.
Author: Rafael Bernal
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811230848
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 162
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Book Description
Never before in English, this legendary precursor to eco-fiction turns the coming insect apocalypse on its head A Wall Street Journal Best Science Fiction Book of 2021 A bitter drunk forsakes civilization and takes to the Mexican jungle, trapping animals, selling their pelts to buy liquor for colossal benders, and slowly rotting away in his fetid hut. His neighbors, a clan of the Lacodón tribe of Chiapas, however, see something more in him than he does himself (dubbing him Wise Owl): when he falls deathly ill, a shaman named Black Ant saves his life—and, almost by chance, in driving out his fever, she exorcises the demon of alcoholism as well. Slowly recovering, weak in his hammock, our antihero discovers a curious thing about the mosquitoes’ buzzing, “which to human ears seemed so irritating and pointless.” Perhaps, in fact, it constituted a language he might learn—and with the help of a flute and a homemade dictionary—even speak. Slowly, he masters Mosquil, with astonishing consequences… Will he harness the mosquitoes’ global might? And will his new powers enable him to take over the world that’s rejected him? A book far ahead of its time, His Name Was Death looks down the double-barreled shotgun of ecological disaster and colonial exploitation—and cackles a graveyard laugh.
Author: Mark Leslie
Publisher: EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
ISBN: 1770531203
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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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.
Author: Burkhard Madea
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1444181777
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
Estimation of the Time Since Death remains the foremost authoritative book on scientifically calculating the estimated time of death postmortem. Building on the success of previous editions which covered the early postmortem period, this new edition also covers the later postmortem period including putrefactive changes, entomology, and postmortem r
Author: Frank Ostaseski
Publisher: Flatiron Books
ISBN: 1250074665
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
The cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project and pioneer behind the compassionate care movement shares an inspiring exploration of the lessons dying has to offer about living a fulfilling life. Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight, helping us to discover what matters most. Life and death are a package deal. They cannot be pulled apart and we cannot truly live unless we are aware of death. The Five Invitations is an exhilarating meditation on the meaning of life and how maintaining an ever-present consciousness of death can bring us closer to our truest selves. As a renowned teacher of compassionate caregiving and the cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project, Frank Ostaseski has sat on the precipice of death with more than a thousand people. In The Five Invitations, he distills the lessons gleaned over the course of his career, offering an evocative and stirring guide that points to a radical path to transformation. The Five Invitations: -Don’t Wait -Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing -Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience -Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things -Cultivate Don’t Know Mind These Five Invitations show us how to wake up fully to our lives. They can be understood as best practices for anyone coping with loss or navigating any sort of transition or crisis; they guide us toward appreciating life’s preciousness. Awareness of death can be a valuable companion on the road to living well, forging a rich and meaningful life, and letting go of regret. The Five Invitations is a powerful and inspiring exploration of the essential wisdom dying has to impart to all of us.
