Download or read book Describing Death in America written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2003-05-03 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National expenditures for medical care in the months and days preceding death are enormous. But we do not know whether that money is buying good quality care or optimizing the quality of life of those dying, or whether the situation is getting better or worse over time. The information that exists "describing death" at a national level â€" though some of it is very informative â€" is fragmentary. This report recommends ways to fill the information gaps by better use of existing nationally-representative data, and through some new measures, in particular, a new, ongoing National Mortality Followback Survey. The aim is to allow us to benchmark where we are today as a society, and what goals we can set to minimize pain and suffering and maximize the quality of life of all of us who will die in the years to come.
Download or read book Describing Death in America written by June R. Lunney and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism written by Anne Case and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller A Wall Street Journal Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year A New Statesman Book to Read From economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, a groundbreaking account of how the flaws in capitalism are fatal for America's working class Deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism are rising dramatically in the United States, claiming hundreds of thousands of American lives. Anne Case and Angus Deaton explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. This critically important book paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline, and provides solutions that can rein in capitalism's excesses and make it work for everyone.
Download or read book The Death and Life of Great American Cities written by Jane Jacobs and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Remembering and Disremembering the Dead written by Floris Tomasini and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence. This book is a multidisciplinary work that investigates the notion of posthumous harm over time. The question what is and when is death, affects how we understand the possibility of posthumous harm and redemption. Whilst it is impossible to hurt the dead, it is possible to harm the wishes, beliefs and memories of persons that once lived. In this way, this book highlights the vulnerability of the dead, and makes connections to a historical oeuvre, to add critical value to similar concepts in history that are overlooked by most philosophers. There is a long historical view of case studies that illustrate the conceptual character of posthumous punishment; that is, dissection and gibbetting of the criminal corpse after the Murder Act (1752), and those shot at dawn during the First World War. A long historical view is also taken of posthumous harm; that is, body-snatching in the late Georgian period, and organ-snatching at Alder Hey in the 1990s.
Download or read book Estimation of the Time Since Death written by Burkhard Madea and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2015-09-08 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Stiff The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers written by Mary Roach and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004-04-27 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look inside the world of forensics examines the use of human cadavers in a wide range of endeavors, including research into new surgical procedures, space exploration, and a Tennessee human decay research facility.
Download or read book Brother I m Dying written by Edwidge Danticat and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2007 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a personal memoir, the author describes her relationships with the two men closest to her--her father and his brother, Joseph, a charismatic pastor with whom she lived after her parents emigrated from Haiti to the United States.
Download or read book American Afterlives written by Shannon Lee Dawdy and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mesmerizing trip across America to investigate the changing face of death in contemporary life Death in the United States is undergoing a quiet revolution. You can have your body frozen, dissected, composted, dissolved, or tanned. Your family can incorporate your remains into jewelry, shotgun shells, paperweights, and artwork. Cremations have more than doubled, and DIY home funerals and green burials are on the rise. American Afterlives is Shannon Lee Dawdy’s lyrical and compassionate account of changing death practices in America as people face their own mortality and search for a different kind of afterlife. As an anthropologist and archaeologist, Dawdy knows that how a society treats its dead yields powerful clues about its beliefs and values. As someone who has experienced loss herself, she knows there is no way to tell this story without also reexamining her own views about death and dying. In this meditative and gently humorous book, Dawdy embarks on a transformative journey across the United States, talking to funeral directors, death-care entrepreneurs, designers, cemetery owners, death doulas, and ordinary people from all walks of life. What she discovers is that, by reinventing death, Americans are reworking their ideas about personhood, ritual, and connection across generations. She also confronts the seeming contradiction that American death is becoming at the same time more materialistic and more spiritual. Written in conjunction with a documentary film project, American Afterlives features images by cinematographer Daniel Zox that provide their own testament to our rapidly changing attitudes toward death and the afterlife.
Download or read book The Latehomecomer written by Kao Kalia Yang and published by Coffee House Press. This book was released on 2010-12-15 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In search of a place to call home, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to America. But lacking a written language of their own, the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others. Driven to tell her family’s story after her grandmother’s death, The Latehomecomer is Kao Kalia Yang’s tribute to the remarkable woman whose spirit held them all together. It is also an eloquent, firsthand account of a people who have worked hard to make their voices heard. Beginning in the 1970s, as the Hmong were being massacred for their collaboration with the United States during the Vietnam War, Yang recounts the harrowing story of her family’s captivity, the daring rescue undertaken by her father and uncles, and their narrow escape into Thailand where Yang was born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. When she was six years old, Yang’s family immigrated to America, and she evocatively captures the challenges of adapting to a new place and a new language. Through her words, the dreams, wisdom, and traditions passed down from her grandmother and shared by an entire community have finally found a voice. Together with her sister, Kao Kalia Yang is the founder of a company dedicated to helping immigrants with writing, translating, and business services. A graduate of Carleton College and Columbia University, Yang has recently screened The Place Where We Were Born, a film documenting the experiences of Hmong American refugees. Visit her website at www.kaokaliayang.com.
Download or read book A GRIEF OBSERVED Based on a Personal Journal written by C. S. Lewis and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Grief Observed is a collection of Lewis's reflections on the experience of bereavement following the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, in 1960. The book was first published under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk as Lewis wished to avoid identification as the author. Though republished in 1963 after his death under his own name, the text still refers to his wife as "H" (her first name, which she rarely used, was Helen). The book is compiled from the four notebooks which Lewis used to vent and explore his grief. He illustrates the everyday trials of his life without Joy and explores fundamental questions of faith and theodicy. Lewis's step-son (Joy's son) Douglas Gresham points out in his 1994 introduction that the indefinite article 'a' in the title makes it clear that Lewis's grief is not the quintessential grief experience at the loss of a loved one, but one individual's perspective among countless others. The book helped inspire a 1985 television movie Shadowlands, as well as a 1993 film of the same name. Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was a British novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, lay theologian and Christian apologist. He is best known for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.
Download or read book When Children Die written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2003-02-09 with total page 713 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The death of a child is a special sorrow. No matter the circumstances, a child's death is a life-altering experience. Except for the child who dies suddenly and without forewarning, physicians, nurses, and other medical personnel usually play a central role in the lives of children who die and their families. At best, these professionals will exemplify "medicine with a heart." At worst, families' encounters with the health care system will leave them with enduring painful memories, anger, and regrets. When Children Die examines what we know about the needs of these children and their families, the extent to which such needs areâ€"and are notâ€"being met, and what can be done to provide more competent, compassionate, and consistent care. The book offers recommendations for involving child patients in treatment decisions, communicating with parents, strengthening the organization and delivery of services, developing support programs for bereaved families, improving public and private insurance, training health professionals, and more. It argues that taking these steps will improve the care of children who survive as well as those who do notâ€"and will likewise help all families who suffer with their seriously ill or injured child. Featuring illustrative case histories, the book discusses patterns of childhood death and explores the basic elements of physical, emotional, spiritual, and practical care for children and families experiencing a child's life-threatening illness or injury.
Download or read book The Denial of Death written by ERNEST. BECKER and published by . This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Proof of Heaven written by Eben Alexander and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-10-23 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shares an account of his religiously transformative near-death experience and revealing week-long coma, describing his scientific study of near-death phenomena while explaining what he learned about the nature of human consciousness.
Download or read book The Death Gap written by David A. Ansell, MD and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-06-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We hear plenty about the widening income gap between the rich and the poor in America and about the expanding distance separating the haves and the have-nots. But when detailing the many things that the poor have not, we often overlook the most critical—their health. The poor die sooner. Blacks die sooner. And poor urban blacks die sooner than almost all other Americans. In nearly four decades as a doctor at hospitals serving some of the poorest communities in Chicago, David A. Ansell, MD, has witnessed firsthand the lives behind these devastating statistics. In The Death Gap, he gives a grim survey of these realities, drawn from observations and stories of his patients. While the contrasts and disparities among Chicago’s communities are particularly stark, the death gap is truly a nationwide epidemic—as Ansell shows, there is a thirty-five-year difference in life expectancy between the healthiest and wealthiest and the poorest and sickest American neighborhoods. If you are poor, where you live in America can dictate when you die. It doesn’t need to be this way; such divisions are not inevitable. Ansell calls out the social and cultural arguments that have been raised as ways of explaining or excusing these gaps, and he lays bare the structural violence—the racism, economic exploitation, and discrimination—that is really to blame. Inequality is a disease, Ansell argues, and we need to treat and eradicate it as we would any major illness. To do so, he outlines a vision that will provide the foundation for a healthier nation—for all. As the COVID-19 mortality rates in underserved communities proved, inequality is all around us, and often the distance between high and low life expectancy can be a matter of just a few blocks. Updated with a new foreword by Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot and an afterword by Ansell, The Death Gap speaks to the urgency to face this national health crisis head-on.
Download or read book Finding Meaning written by David Kessler and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking new work, David Kessler—an expert on grief and the coauthor with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross of the iconic On Grief and Grieving—journeys beyond the classic five stages to discover a sixth stage: meaning. In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler Ross first identified the stages of dying in her transformative book On Death and Dying. Decades later, she and David Kessler wrote the classic On Grief and Grieving, introducing the stages of grief with the same transformative pragmatism and compassion. Now, based on hard-earned personal experiences, as well as knowledge and wisdom earned through decades of work with the grieving, Kessler introduces a critical sixth stage. Many people look for “closure” after a loss. Kessler argues that it’s finding meaning beyond the stages of grief most of us are familiar with—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—that can transform grief into a more peaceful and hopeful experience. In this book, Kessler gives readers a roadmap to remembering those who have died with more love than pain; he shows us how to move forward in a way that honors our loved ones. Kessler’s insight is both professional and intensely personal. His journey with grief began when, as a child, he witnessed a mass shooting at the same time his mother was dying. For most of his life, Kessler taught physicians, nurses, counselors, police, and first responders about end of life, trauma, and grief, as well as leading talks and retreats for those experiencing grief. Despite his knowledge, his life was upended by the sudden death of his twenty-one-year-old son. How does the grief expert handle such a tragic loss? He knew he had to find a way through this unexpected, devastating loss, a way that would honor his son. That, ultimately, was the sixth state of grief—meaning. In Finding Meaning, Kessler shares the insights, collective wisdom, and powerful tools that will help those experiencing loss. Finding Meaning is a necessary addition to grief literature and a vital guide to healing from tremendous loss. This is an inspiring, deeply intelligent must-read for anyone looking to journey away from suffering, through loss, and towards meaning.
Download or read book U S Health in International Perspective written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-04-12 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.
