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| Before and After Loss
A Neurologist's Perspective on Loss, Grief, and Our Brain
By Lisa M. Shulman
Review by Maura Pilotti, Ph.D. on Tue, Feb 26th 2019. |  | One of the most challenging traumatic experiences that we may endure involves witnessing a loved one’s battle with an incapacitating illness until death brings his/her life to an end. Under these circumstances, the surviving person is forced to cope with two consecutive traumas, one induced by the illness and the demands that it poses on all parties involved, and the other brought about by the awareness of the loved one’s death and its consequences. During the loved one’s illness, the recognition of his/her symptoms, the necessities of the therapeutic interventions he/she und
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Human Dignity and Assisted Death
By Sebastian Muders
Review by Bob Lane on Tue, Jan 1st 2019. | The so-called distinction between active and passive euthanasia was challenged by the philosopher James Rachels in a paper first published in 1975 in the New England Journal of Medicine. In that paper Rachels challenges both the use and moral significance of that distinction for several reasons. First, he argues, active euthanasia is in many cases more humane than passive; second, the doctrine leads to decisions concerning life and death being made on irrelevant grounds; and third, the doctrine rests on a distinction between killing and letting die that itself has no moral significance. R
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Ethics at the End of Life
New Issues and Arguments
By John Davis (Editor)
Review by William Simkulet, Ph.D. on Tue, Feb 13th 2018. |  | Ethics at the End of Life: New Issues and Arguments is a collection of 14 newly published essays tackling some of the more scarcely discussed topics in contemporary ethics concerning life and death. Editor John Davis claims the collection has “a focus on cutting-edge work and new issues.” This is somewhat misleading, as most of the topics discussed in this collection are covered more thoroughly and persuasively elsewhere, and the discussion of any particular topic in this collection is incomplete, usually assuming the author is familiar with the touchstones issues in th
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The Bright Hour
A Memoir of Living and Dying
By Nina Riggs
Review by Christian Perring on Tue, Dec 19th 2017. | Nina Riggs died in February 2017 at the age of 39. She was a poet, blogger, and mother. Her blog, Suspicious Country, was largely about her coping with cancer and the treatment for it. Her wonderful memoir The Bright Hour covers the same ground. She writes about her marriage to her husband John and her sons Freddy and Benny, and her parents Peter and Janet. Her mother had also died of cancer 18 months previously. So Riggs deals with plenty of disease and prospects of death, which could be hard work for the reader. But her meditations on her experience are engrossing and touching rather than de
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Extreme Measures
Finding a Better Path to the End of Life
By Jessica Nutik Zitter
Review by John Mullen on Tue, Oct 3rd 2017. |  | I cannot recall reviewing a book that I recommend as enthusiastically and to as wide a readership as Extreme Measures. The author writes as a specialist in both intensive care medicine and palliative care medicine, practices that are often at odds during the end of life period. But the greatness of this book depends not so much upon the author's expertise as upon a deep respect for the possibilities that human life contains and a profound compassion for those, patients and loved ones, faced with its loss.
The book begins with some family history, the upshot of which is that Dr. Zitter is the
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Mortal Dilemmas
The Troubled Landscape of Death in America
By Donald Joralemon
Review by Jamie Carlin Watson, Ph.D. on Tue, Jan 10th 2017. | Mortal Dilemmas: The Troubled Landscape of Death in America is an accessible and informative contribution to the public conversation over death and dying. To the many scholarly and popular voices, Donald Joralemon adds the anthropologist's to explore five end-of-life challenges through political, legal, religious, and bioethical lenses: assisted dying, uncertain mental states, the definition of death, the role of grief, and memorialization. He bookends his discussion with the question of whether America is a death-denying culture, and he draws on his research into these five dilemmas to argue
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Understanding Grief
An Introduction
By Richard Gross
Review by Flavia Felletti on Thu, May 26th 2016. |  | With Understanding Grief: An Introduction, Richard Gross aims to provide an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the major models of grief, focusing on the individual experience of bereavement just as on how bereavement is experienced in relation to the social, cultural, and religious contexts. Different kinds of bereavement and their impact on the bereaved are discussed. Among them: the loss of a spouse, a child, and the impact of traumatic loss on complicated grief. Further topics discussed include pet loss, death anxiety, and post-traumatic growth. Personal accounts of grief, r
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When Breath Becomes Air
By Paul Kalanithi
Review by Christian Perring on Tue, May 10th 2016. | Kalanithi's memoir of his career as a student of literature and philosophy and as a neuroscientist neurosurgeon has gained a lot of attention. Just when he is on the verge of professional success when he gets a diagnosis of cancer. He and his wife plan what to do -- they had planned to have a family, but will they have time to do that now? Kalanithi reflects on his experience in his undergraduate and graduate days, and his decision to switch from a theoretical approach to a medical approach. We hear about his experience treating patients and getting more used to seeing death.
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