Sociology: death and dying

A devastating essay on loss and the people we love from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the bestselling author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun. 'Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn...

A portrait of life, and of self destruction, by young Australian Aboriginal men and women. The author suggests we look to our Australian Aboriginal history for an understanding of this relatively recent phenomenon. That so many young Australian...

Discover how the bonds of life and love transcend death• Explains the phenomenon of crisis apparitions: visions of loved ones that are experienced simultaneously with their deaths, even at great distances• Examines a wide range of sources, including...

Explores the extraordinary states of expanded consciousness that arise during comas, both positive and negative• Examines the experiences of those who have survived comas• Demonstrates how a key element of the brain is switched off by coma-inducing...

What are our options after death?The baby boom was the greatest explosion of births in history. It follows that someday soon we'll see the greatest explosion of deaths in history, and we aren't ready for it. Cemeteries are full and news ones aren't being...

People who met the inevitable with elan, unflappability, dignity, or physical courageWe all have to go sometime, so why not go in a manner that reflects well on your entire life? With humanity, insight, and occasional humour, author Matt Sturrock has...

This book is not about the tactical aspects of police work but the intensity of emotions accompanying a critical shooting. Rebecca's experience and research in suicide-by-cop brings a no-holds-barred approach and speaks to all sides of this issue. She...

Immerse yourself in stories of gods and goddesses of the underworld and explore how themes of death, love, and revenge are depicted in folklore and mythology by different cultures around the world.Myths of the Underworld is a vibrant collection of ten...

"David Lindsay-Abaire has crafted a drama that's not just a departure but a revelation-an intensely emotional examination of grief, laced with wit, insightfulness, compassion and searing honesty." David Rooney, Variety "A beautifully observed new play...

Thousands, perhaps millions, of people have had near-death experiences (NDEs). Why do so many report uncannily similar experiences? What are they-a simple trick of the mind and body or something more? What are we to make of them, and do they tell us...

Engaging, funny, and unflinching essays about coming of age as a transplant patient and living each day as a giftAdina Talve-Goodman was born with a congenital heart condition and survived multiple operations over the course of her childhood, including a...

In September 2019, Mavis Eccleston was acquitted of murdering her 81-year-old husband Dennis. Dennis had terminal cancer and had taken an overdose of pain medication to end his own life. The turmoil that followed for Mavis and her family sheds light on...

The zombie has shuffled with dead-eyed, remorseless menace from its beginnings in obscure folklore and superstition to become the dominant image of the undead today. In contemporary visions of global apocalypse, such as the...

After Lifeis a collective history of how Americans experienced, navigated, commemorated, and ignored mass death and loss during the global COVID-19 pandemic, mass uprisings for racial justice, and the near presidential coup in 2021 following the 2020...

The Process Church of the Final Judgment was the apocalyptic shadow side of the flower-powered '60s and perhaps the most notorious cult of modern times.Love, Sex, Fear, Death is the shocking, surprising, and secretive inside story of The Process Church,...

Finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for DramaNowa major motion picture starring Jon Hamm, Geena Davis, Lois Smith, and Tim Robbins."An elegant, thoughtful and quietly unsettling drama.Marjorie Primeoperates by stealth... at some point, you realize that...

"Satire is her oxygen. . . . In her new oddball comedy, Dead Man's Cell Phone, Sarah Ruhl is forever vital in her lyrical and biting takes on how we behave."-The Washington Post"Ruhl's zany probe of the razor-thin line between life and death delivers a...

Taking its cue from Michel de Montaigne, this book asks what COVID-19 can teach us about the 'art of living'. It examines eight themes from a philosophical perspective, including attitudes to old age, populism and life under lockdown, arguing that the...

In the final days of 2019, a new and deadly virus was quietly spreading through the city of Wuhan, China. Within six months it would kill half a million people worldwide, infect a further 10 million, and change the way all of us live, work and play...

Throughout history, the mystery of death has captivated artists, scientists, philosophers, physicians, and theologians. This eerie chronology ventures to the borderlines of science and sheds light into the darkness, exploring such diverse topics as the...

This book explores the turbulent social history of churchyards and cemeteries over the last 150 years. Using sites from across rural North Yorkshire, the text examines the workings of the Burial Acts and discloses the ways in which religious politics...

A mesmerizing trip across America to investigate the changing face of death in contemporary lifeDeath in the United States is undergoing a quiet revolution. You can have your body frozen, dissected, composted, dissolved, or tanned. Your family can...

Assisted dying is perhaps one of the most divisive issues of the modern age, generating endless headlines and moral debates. Published in conjunction with the organization Dignity in Dying, this important new book provides a forum...

Ana and her son, Philippe, are grieving the loss of Philippe's father when Ana's hairstylist Kimi dies in an apparent suicide. Driven by a force she doesn't understand, Ana starts digging into Kimi's past in Guyana in 1978, which leads to nested tales of...

On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss

An examination of the contemporary medicalization of death and dying that calls us to acknowledge instead death's existential and emotional realities. Death is a natural, inevitable, and deeply human process, and yet Western medicine tends to view it as...