Download or read book My Life with Death written by David J. VanBuskirk and published by Outskirts Press. This book was released on 2014-08-27 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eternal darkness of death comes to every human. Whether it is the miscarriage of an imperfect, fertile egg, or the grim reaper coming to harvest our soul, we all enter into another world in an instant. It can happen at any time, from the moment of conception until well past the century mark. We all have our very own time to die. "My Life With Death" is a fast paced, firsthand account of one man's journey as an undertaker. From David VanBuskirk's accidental beginning as an ambulance driver, to the surprise ending, he takes his readers through some of the most memorable instances in his life while dealing with the injured, the dying, and the dead. Out of the thousands of experiences in his career, these are the incidents that will forever be etched into his memory. The story contains compelling accounts about Dave's involvement with some of those dead human bodies, and their survivors. It contains his own observations, thoughts, and descriptions of how, when, and where death occurred. He relays his relationship to the circumstances, and to the part he played in the removal and disposition of those bodies. Dave's intentions are to enlighten the reader about his profession: what undertakers do, the odd hours they work, and to let you know that those in the funeral industry are humans, also. Some of what he writes about is sad, some of it is humorous, and some of it is extremely gross. Dave tells about some of the mistakes he's made in dealing with grieving families, and some of his embarrassing moments while conducting funeral services. He relays the humor attached to death, and the gruesome, grotesque looking bodies that he's been forced to deal with. He also reveals some behind the scenes techniques involved in the preparation of dead human bodies. Dave explains, in vivid detail, how an autopsy is performed, and how the body is put back together by the embalmer. He also explains how he makes a grotesque looking body presentable to the next of kin. "During my thirt

Download or read book Life and I written by Elisabeth Helland Larsen and published by Die Gestalten Verlag-DGV. This book was released on 2016-04 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Rosy-cheeked and wrapped in blue, with a flower in her hair, Death rides a pink bike. Death, a greeneyed little girl in this pastel world, visits small animals with soft fur and big animals with sharp teeth. She lingers with a kindly grandmother as they knit one last scarf together. She wanders through surroundings of gentle beauty and she tells us who she is. For parents of children facing the loss of a family member, a friend, or a pet, this book finds words to express what is often so difficult to explain. It ends with such a feeling of uplift and acceptance that readers of any age will turn the last page with a smile and a tear"--Excerpt from Amazon.com.

Download or read book Life for death written by Michael Mewshaw and published by Doubleday Books. This book was released on 1980 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Death Class written by Erika Hayasaki and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The poignant, “powerful” (The Boston Globe) look at how to appreciate life from an extraordinary professor who teaches about death: “Poetic passages and assorted revelations you’ll likely not forget” (Chicago Tribune). Why does a college course on death have a three-year waiting list? When nurse Norma Bowe decided to teach a course on death at a college in New Jersey, she never expected it to be popular. But year after year students crowd into her classroom, and the reason is clear: Norma’s “death class” is really about how to make the most of what poet Mary Oliver famously called our “one wild and precious life.” Under the guise of discussions about last wills and last breaths and visits to cemeteries and crematoriums, Norma teaches her students to find grace in one another. In The Death Class, award-winning journalist Erika Hayasaki followed Norma for more than four years, showing how she steers four extraordinary students from their tormented families and neighborhoods toward happiness: she rescues one young woman from her suicidal mother, helps a young man manage his schizophrenic brother, and inspires another to leave his gang life behind. Through this unorthodox class on death, Norma helps kids who are barely hanging on to understand not only the value of their own lives, but also the secret of fulfillment: to throw yourself into helping others. Hayasaki’s expert reporting and literary prose bring Norma’s wisdom out of the classroom, transforming it into an inspiring lesson for all. In the end, Norma’s very own life—and how she lives it—is the lecture that sticks. “Readers will come away struck by Bowe’s compassion—and by the unexpectedly life-affirming messages of courage that spring from her students’ harrowing experiences” (Entertainment Weekly).

Download or read book Life Death Prizes written by Stephen May and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the 2012 COSTA Novel Award Billy's Mum is dead. He knows - because he reads about it in magazines - that people die every day in ways that are more random and tragic and stupid than hers, but for nineteen-year-old Billy and his little brother, Oscar, their mother's death in a bungled street robbery is the most random and tragic and stupid thing that could possibly have happened to them. Now Billy must be both mother and father to Oscar, and despite what his well-meaning aunt, the PTA mothers, the social services and Oscar's own prodigal father all think, he knows he is more than up to the job, thank you very much. The boys' new world, where bedtimes are arbitrary, tidiness is optional and healthy home-cooked meals pile up uneaten in the freezer, is built out of chaos and fierce love, but it's also a world that teeters perilously on its axis. And as Billy's obsession with his mother's missing killer grows, he risks losing sight of the one thing that really matters... Funny, bittersweet and unforgettable, Life! Death! Prizes! is a story of grief, resilience and brotherly love.

Download or read book To Heaven and Back written by Mary C Neal and published by Authentic Media Inc. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A doctor's account of her own experience of death, heaven and return to life with a new realization of her purpose on earth. Dr Mary Neal, an orthopaedic surgeon, was on a kayaking holiday in Chile. Sceptical of near death experiences, she was to have her life transformed when her kayak became wedged in rocks at the bottom of a waterfall and was underwater for so long that her heart stopped.To Heaven And Back is Mary's faith-enriching story of her spiritual journey, her first-hand experience of heaven and its continuing life-enhancing effects.

Download or read book Death by Living written by N. D. Wilson and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each of us is in the middle of a story. In this astoundingly unique book, bestselling author N.D. Wilson reminds us that to truly live we must recognize that we are dying. Cause of death: life. Death by Living is a poetic exploration of faith, futility, and the incredible joy of this mortal life. N.D. Wilson recounts stories from his life in poetic prose, giving perspective on the life we're given by God. Death by Living explores the topics of family, grappling with the death of loved ones, and how to live with intention to get the most out of our time on Earth. Wilson encourages us to live hard and die grateful, and to see Christ in every pair of eyes. To write a past we won’t regret. All of us must pause and breathe. See the past, see life as the fruit of providence and thousands of personal narratives. We did not choose where to set our feet in time, but we choose where to set them next. We stand in the now. God says create. Live. Choose. Shape the past. Etch your life in stone, and what you make will be forever. In Death by Living, you will: Experience life with renewed wonder Recognize mundane moments as opportunities Learn to live hard and die grateful Recognize death as a gift instead of something to be feared At once inspiring, humorous, and unbelievably moving, this a book that you will read again and again, finding fresh perspective each time you open it.

Download or read book The Death of God and the Meaning of Life written by Julian Young and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-05-16 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the meaning of life? In today's secular, post-religious scientific world, this question has become a serious preoccupation. But it also has a long history: many major philosophers have thought deeply about it, as Julian Young so vividly illustrates in this thought-provoking second edition of The Death of God and the Meaning of Life. Three new chapters explore Søren Kierkegaard’s attempts to preserve a Christian answer to the question of the meaning of life, Karl Marx's attempt to translate this answer into naturalistic and atheistic terms, and Sigmund Freud’s deep pessimism about the possibility of any version of such an answer. Part 1 presents an historical overview of philosophers from Plato to Marx who have believed in a meaning of life, either in some supposed ‘other’ world or in the future of this world. Part 2 assesses what happened when the traditional structures that give life meaning began to erode. With nothing to take their place, these structures gave way to the threat of nihilism, to the appearance that life is meaningless. Young looks at the responses to this threat in chapters on Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Foucault and Derrida. Fully revised and updated throughout, this highly engaging exploration of fundamental issues will captivate anyone who’s ever asked themselves where life’s meaning (if there is one) really lies. It also makes a perfect historical introduction to philosophy, particularly to the continental tradition.

Download or read book Death and Personal Survival written by Robert F. Almeder and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1992 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Robert Almeder has clearly summarized an extensive body of evidence and argues its merits with the skill of a professional philosopher.'--Ian Stevenson, M.D., University of Virginia, Health Sciences Center

Download or read book The Reproduction of Life Death written by Dawne McCance and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 1975–76 academic year, Jacques Derrida delivered a seminar, La vie la mort (Life Death), at the École normale supérieure, in Paris. Based on archival translations of this untapped but soon-to-be-published seminar, The Reproduction of Life Death offers an unprecedented study of Derrida’s engagement with molecular biology and genetics, particularly the work of the biologist François Jacob. Structured as an itinerary of “three rings,” each departing from and coming back to Nietzsche, Derrida’s seminar ties Jacob’s logocentric account of reproduction to the reproductive program of teaching that characterizes the academic institution, challenging this mode of teaching as auto-reproduction along with the concept of “academic freedom” on which it is based. McCance also brings Derrida’s critique of Jacob’s theory of auto-reproduction together with his reading of reproductivity, the tendency to repeat-reproduce, that is theorized and enacted in Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The book further shows how Derrida’s account of life death relates to his writings on autobiography and the signature and to such later concerns as the question of the animal. McCance brings extensive archival research together with a deep knowledge of Derrida’s work a background in genetics to offer a fascinating new account of an encounter between philosophy and the hard sciences that will be of interest to theorists in a wide range of disciplines concerned with the question of life.

Download or read book When Breath Becomes Air written by Paul Kalanithi and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

Download or read book The Nature of Life and Death written by Patricia Wiltshire and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting blend of science writing and true-crime narrative that explores the valuable but often shocking interface between crime and nature--and the secrets each can reveal about the other--from a pioneer in forensic ecology and a trailblazing female scientist. From mud tracks on a quiet country road to dirt specks on the soles of walking boots, forensic ecologist Patricia Wiltshire uses her decades of scientific expertise to find often-overlooked clues left behind by criminal activity. She detects evidence and eliminates hypotheses armed with little more than a microscope, eventually developing a compelling thesis of the who, what, how, and when of a crime. Wiltshire's remarkable accuracy has made her one of the most in-demand police consultants in the world, and her curiosity, humility, and passion for the truth have guided her every step of the way. A riveting blend of science writing and true-crime narrative, The Nature of Life and Death details Wiltshire's unique journey from college professor to crime fighter: solving murders, locating corpses, and exonerating the falsely accused. Along the way, she introduces us to the unseen world all around us and underneath our feet: plants, animals, pollen, spores, fungi, and microbes that we move through every day. Her story is a testament to the power of persistence and reveals how our relationship with the vast natural world reaches far deeper than we might think.

Download or read book The Life and Death of Democracy written by John Keane and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 717 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Keane's The Life and Death of Democracy will inspire and shock its readers. Presenting the first grand history of democracy for well over a century, it poses along the way some tough and timely questions: can we really be sure that democracy had its origins in ancient Greece? How did democratic ideals and institutions come to have the shape they do today? Given all the recent fanfare about democracy promotion, why are many people now gripped by the feeling that a bad moon is rising over all the world's democracies? Do they indeed have a future? Or is perhaps democracy fated to melt away, along with our polar ice caps? The work of one of Britain's leading political writers, this is no mere antiquarian history. Stylishly written, this superb book confronts its readers with an entirely fresh and irreverent look at the past, present and future of democracy. It unearths the beginnings of such precious institutions and ideals as government by public assembly, votes for women, the secret ballot, trial by jury and press freedom. It tracks the changing, hotly disputed meanings of democracy and describes quite a few of the extraordinary characters, many of them long forgotten, who dedicated their lives to building or defending democracy. And it explains why democracy is still potentially the best form of government on earth -- and why democracies everywhere are sleepwalking their way into deep trouble.

Download or read book The End of the Christian Life written by J. Todd Billings and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We're all going to die. Yet in our medically advanced, technological age, many of us see death as a distant reality--something that happens only at the end of a long life or to other people. In The End of the Christian Life, Todd Billings urges Christians to resist that view. Instead, he calls us to embrace our mortality in our daily life and faith. This is the journey of genuine discipleship, Billings says: following the crucified and resurrected Lord in a world of distraction and false hopes. Drawing on his experience as a professor and father living with incurable cancer, Billings offers a personal yet deeply theological account of the gospel's expansive hope for small, mortal creatures. Artfully weaving rich theology with powerful narrative, Billings writes for church leaders and laypeople alike. Whether we are young or old, reeling from loss or clinging to our own prosperity, this book challenges us to walk a strange but wondrous path: in the midst of joy and lament, to receive mortal limits as a gift, an opportunity to give ourselves over to the Lord of life.

Download or read book Death written by Jaggi Vasudev (Sadhguru) and published by Penguin/Ananda. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether a believer or not, a devotee or an agnostic, an accomplished seeker or a simpleton, this is truly a book for all those who shall die!

Download or read book The Death and Life of the Great Lakes written by Dan Egan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award "Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.… Egan’s book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.

Download or read book Five Days at Memorial written by Sheri Fink and published by Crown. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The award-winning book that inspired an Apple Original series from Apple TV+ • A landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina—and the suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice—from a Pulitzer Prize–winning physician and reporter “An amazing tale, as inexorable as a Greek tragedy and as gripping as a whodunit.”—Dallas Morning News After Hurricane Katrina struck and power failed, amid rising floodwaters and heat, exhausted staff at Memorial Medical Center designated certain patients last for rescue. Months later, a doctor and two nurses were arrested and accused of injecting some of those patients with life-ending drugs. Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting by Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink, unspools the mystery, bringing us inside a hospital fighting for its life and into the most charged questions in health care: which patients should be prioritized, and can health care professionals ever be excused for hastening death? Transforming our understanding of human nature in crisis, Five Days at Memorial exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals how ill-prepared we are for large-scale disasters—and how we can do better. ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, Entertainment Weekly, Christian Science Monitor, Kansas City Star WINNER: National Book Critics Circle Award, J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Ridenhour Book Prize, American Medical Writers Association Medical Book Award, National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Award