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75 books match the query 'Death & Dying' and 4 start with a

cover of Aesthetics in Grief and Mourning: Philosophical Reflections on Coping with Loss

Aesthetics in Grief and Mourning

Philosophical Reflections on Coping with Loss

Kathleen Marie Higgins

University of Chicago Press, 2024

A philosophical exploration of aesthetic experience during bereavement.

In Aesthetics of Grief and Mourning, philosopher Kathleen Marie Higgins reflects on the ways that aesthetics aids people experiencing loss. Some practices related to bereavement, such as funerals, are scripted, but many others are recursive, improvisational, mundane—telling stories, listening to music, and reflecting on art or literature. Higgins shows how these grounding, aesthetic practices can ease the disorienting effects of loss, shedding new light on the importance of aesthetics for personal and communal flourishing.
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cover of America's National Cemeteries: A Meditation on History, Memory, and Place

America's National Cemeteries

A Meditation on History, Memory, and Place

Timothy B. Spears, Foreword by Roderick Gainer

University of Alabama Press, 2025

A poignant photographic tour of honor, sacrifice, and memory within America's national cemeteries

In America’s National Cemeteries, Timothy B. Spears takes the reader on a grand tour of these singular places of commemoration, the final resting place for more than four million American military personnel who died either in wartime, during their time of service, or after their honorable discharge. His absorbing account—part historical narrative and part travelogue—is enhanced by 180 of his remarkable photographs, which capture the spirit, beauty, and solemn remembrance to be found in each of the 156 national cemeteries across America.

Spears details the history of the cemeteries since their establishment during the American Civil War and explores their ongoing evolution and importance to American society and the commitment America has made to honoring its military dead. With headstones neatly arrayed in rows and each soldier typically buried in an identical fashion, the cemeteries symbolize an enduring connection between human mortality and national identity. They also reflect the nation’s persistent challenges with inequalities and injustice, violence and racism, lingering questions about “good” versus “bad” wars, and the vexed legacies of America’s military forays.

In this unique meditation on American history, memory, and place, Spears embraces the impact of the past on the present, offering an original perspective on the meaning of military service, mortality, and remembrance and how these national cemeteries have evolved into truly iconic and emblematic American spaces. The book also features a foreword by Roderick Gainer, Chief Curator of Arlington National Cemetery since 2013.

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cover of And a Time to Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life

And a Time to Die

How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life

Sharon R. Kaufman

University of Chicago Press, 2006

Over the past thirty years, the way Americans experience death has been dramatically altered. The advent of medical technology capable of sustaining life without restoring health has changed where, when, and how we die. In this revelatory study, medical anthropologist Sharon R. Kaufman examines the powerful center of those changes: the hospital, where most Americans die today. She deftly links the experiences of patients and families, the work of hospital staff, and the ramifications of institutional bureaucracy to show the invisible power of the hospital system in shaping death and our individual experience of it. In doing so, Kaufman also speaks to the ways we understand what it means to be human and to be alive.

“An act of courage and a public service.”—San Francisco Chronicle

 “This beautifully synthesized and disquieting account of how hospital patients die melds disciplined description with acute analysis, incorporating the voices of doctors, nurses, social workers, and patients in a provocative analysis of the modern American quest for a ‘good death.’”—Publishers Weekly

 “Kaufman exposes the bureaucratic and ethical quandaries that hover over the modern deathbed.”—Psychology Today

 “Kaufman’s analysis illuminates the complexity of the care of critically ill and dying patients [and] the ambiguity of slogans such as ‘death with dignity,’ ‘quality of life,’ and ‘stopping life support.’ . . . Thought-provoking reading for everyone contemplating the fate of us all.”—New England Journal of Medicine

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cover of Ashes of Immortality: Widow-Burning in India

Ashes of Immortality

Widow-Burning in India

Catherine Weinberger-Thomas

University of Chicago Press, 1999

"At last, she arrives at the fatal end of the plank . . . and, with her hands crossed over her chest, falls straight downward, suspended for a moment in the air before being devoured by the burning pit that awaits her. . . ." This grisly 1829 account by Pierre Dubois demonstrates the usual European response to the Hindu custom of satis sacrificing themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands—horror and revulsion. Yet to those of the Hindu faith, not least the satis themselves, this act signals the sati's sacredness and spiritual power.

Ashes of Immortality attempts to see the satis through Hindu eyes, providing an extensive experiential and psychoanalytic account of ritual self-sacrifice and self-mutilation in South Asia. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork in northern India, where the state-banned practice of sati reemerged in the 1970s, as well as extensive textual analysis, Weinberger-Thomas constructs a radically new interpretation of satis. She shows that their self-immolation transcends gender, caste and class, region and history, representing for the Hindus a path to immortality.
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