For the Romans, the manner of a person's death was the most telling indication of their true character. Death revealed the true patriot, the genuine philosopher, even, perhaps, the great artist-and certainly the faithful Christian. Catharine Edwards draws on the many and richly varied accounts of death in the writings of Roman historians, poets, and philosophers, including Cicero, Lucretius, Virgil, Seneca, Petronius, Tacitus, Tertullian, and Augustine, to investigate the complex significance of dying in the Roman world. Death in the Roman world was largely understood and often literally viewed as a spectacle. Those deaths that figured in recorded history were almost invariably violent-murders, executions, suicides-and yet the most admired figures met their ends with exemplary calm, their last words set down for posterity. From noble deaths in civil war, mortal combat between gladiators, political execution and suicide, to the deathly dinner of Domitian, the harrowing deaths of women such as the mythical Lucretia and Nero's mother Agrippina, as well as instances of Christian martyrdom, Edwards engagingly explores the culture of death in Roman literature and history.

Death appears to be a process rather than a single event in time and may be heralded by deathbed phenomena such as visions that comfort the dying and help to prepare them for death. On behalf of prominent neuropsychiatric Peter Fenwick, Ineke Koedam, an experienced hospice worker, researched these 'end-of-life- experiences'. She interviewed fellow hospice workers in various hospices and bundled their experiences together in this unique book. A dying man who clearly sees his deceased wife and even can talk with her. A dying woman, confused and hardly responsive, who experiences a bright moment when she sees her old friend. End-of-life experiences are -without exception - miraculous. In The Light of Death the author shows that these moments are significant and essential for the dying themselves, their families and caregivers. Koedam believes they indicate a transition to another form of existence. We do not exactly know what the dying are going through internally, however Koedam's research demonstrates that devoted and open minded spiritual care is very important. By developing more openness and understanding for these personal end-of-life experiences, there will be room for the needs of the dying. This allows us to support them even better in the process of acceptance and surrender. In the light of death is informative, comforting and helpful at a time when many people are afraid of dying. "I am convinced that this book will make a huge contribution to the acknowledgement and recognition of end-of-life experiences, which can diminish the fear of death even in its final stages." - Pim van Lommel, cardiologist, author of Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of Near-Death Experience.

No matter where in Canada they occur, inquiries and inquests into untimely Indigenous deaths in state custody often tell the same story. Repeating details of fatty livers, mental illness, alcoholic belligerence, and a mysterious incapacity to cope with modern life, the legal proceedings declare that there are no villains here, only inevitable casualties of Indigenous life. But what about a sixty-seven-year-old man who dies in a hospital in police custody with a large, visible, purple boot print on his chest? Or a barely conscious, alcoholic older man, dropped off by police in a dark alley on a cold Vancouver night? Or Saskatoon's infamous and lethal starlight tours, whose victims were left on the outskirts of town in sub-zero temperatures? How do we account for the repeated failure to care evident in so many cases of Indigenous deaths in custody? In Dying from Improvement, Sherene H. Razack argues that, amidst systematic state violence against Indigenous people, inquiries and inquests serve to obscure the violence of ongoing settler colonialism under the guise of benevolent concern. They tell settler society that it is caring, compassionate, and engaged in improving the lives of Indigenous people - even as the incarceration rate of Indigenous men and women increases and the number of those who die in custody rises. Razack's powerful critique of the Canadian settler state and its legal system speaks to many of today's most pressing issues of social justice: the treatment of Indigenous people, the unparalleled authority of the police and the justice system, and their systematic inhumanity towards those whose lives they perceive as insignificant.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Death and the Migrant is a sociological account of transnational dying and care in British cities. It chronicles two decades of the ageing and dying of the UK's cohort of post-war migrants, as well as more recent arrivals. Chapters of oral history and close ethnographic observation, enriched by photographs, take the reader into the submerged worlds of end-of-life care in hospices, hospitals and homes. While honouring singular lives and storytelling, Death and the Migrant explores the social, economic and cultural landscapes that surround the migrant deathbed in the twenty-first century. Here, everyday challenges - the struggle to belong, relieve pain, love well, and maintain dignity and faith - provide a fresh perspective on concerns and debates about the vulnerability of the body, transnationalism, care and hospitality. Blending narrative accounts from dying people and care professionals with insights from philosophy and feminist and critical race scholars, Yasmin Gunaratnam shows how the care of vulnerable strangers tests the substance of a community. From a radical new interpretation of the history of the contemporary hospice movement and its 'total pain' approach, to the charting of the global care chain and the affective and sensual demands of intercultural care, Gunaratnam offers a unique perspective on how migration endows and replenishes national cultures and care. Far from being a marginal concern, Death and the Migrant shows that transnational dying is very much a predicament of our time, raising questions and concerns that are relevant to all of us.

The terminal diagnosis is given, the knock on the door comes, and someone you love is dying or has just died. Death happens every day, yet as one hospital chaplain said, "Most of the time we just live life as if it isn't an issue until it's in our face."

It's not as if death is a secret. It's on the news and in the newspaper daily, but we don't talk about it very much, almost pretending as if it won't happen to us or our loved ones. But by not talking and not preparing, we make dying and death scarier and more difficult than it needs to be. That is one of the messages that the storytellers in What Obituaries Don't Tell You: Conversations about Life and Death want to impart. Talk and prepare is a theme repeated over and over.

In these stories and interviews you are sure to find people and narratives that are meaningful to you, helping you heal from loss, assuring you that you are not alone in your experiences, and allowing you to find your voice and speak your truth in your own conversations about life and death.

You may also be surprised. Did you know that there is a strong correlation between whether a death is deemed good or bad, easy or difficult, and the relationships in a person's life, including one's relationship to religious or spiritual beliefs?

Whether you are a person who has lost a loved one, a person thinking about your own death and wanting to prepare for it, or a student or professional preparing to or already working with issues of death in any way, you may find that the information that helps you the most is not imparted to you in obituaries but in the stories behind the scenes.

In this set of essays Walima T. Kalusa and Megan Vaughan explore themes in the history of death in Zambia and Malawi from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Drawing on extensive archival and oral historical research they examine the impact of Christianity on spiritual beliefs, the racialised politics of death on the colonial Copperbelt, the transformation of burial practices, the histories of suicide and of maternal mortality, and the political life of the corpse.

The authors provide a comprehensive picture of burial, mourning rituals, commemoration practices and veneration of the dead among the Negev Bedouin. A primary emphasis is the pivotal linkages between the living and the dead embodied in the intermediary role of healers, sorcerers, seers and other arbitrators between heaven and earth, who supplicate -- publicly and privately -- at the gravesite of chosen awliyah (deceased saints). This book brings together integrated findings of three scholars, based on decades of field work that combine close to 65 years of scrutiny. It maps out the locations and particularities of venerated tombs, the identity of the occupants and their individual abilities vis-a-vis the Almighty. Attitudes, beliefs and customs surrounding each gravesite, when combined on a longitudinal scale, reveal changes over time in beliefs and practices in grave worship and burial, mourning and condolence customs. Analysis of the data reveals that the dynamic of grave worship among the Negev Bedouin throws light on ancient traditions in a complex relationship with mainstream Islamic doctrine and the impact of modernity on Bedouin conduct and belief. The authors' observations and interviews with practitioners about their beliefs are compared and augmented with references that exist in the professional literature, including grave worship elsewhere in the Arab world. The Charm of Graves is essential reading for anthropologists, scholars of the sociology of religion, and students of Islam at university and popular levels. The topic has received only marginal attention in existing anthropological works and has been keenly awaited.

Love in the Midst of Grief is the story of a devastating double tragedy; the deaths of two much-loved young men within a short time of one another, one from a terrible virus, the other from unknown causes. Their loss devastated their family. Nine years on, their younger brother-in-law, Satenam Johal, who has a professional background in social care, has written a detailed account of the tragedy and its aftermath. In doing so he hopes not only to help his family in their continuing grief but to provide others who are mourning loved ones to understand and manage the grieving process. The book will also be of great help to professionals seeking to help the bereaved.

A tapestry has many different colored threads, textiles and textures that are woven together to make a beautiful, cohesive and inclusive work of art and community. Tapestry making, now a lost art, served as a concrete art-form, and a metaphor for how families and communities told stories about their lives and connections. Our communities are struggling to find ways to reach and touch young people and the events that are tearing at the fabric of their futures. Tapestries is a creative, and inclusive facilitation guide and offers exploratory support for advocates and centers that must begin to look at layers of losses to stay relevant in their communities, and with more diverse funding sources. Young people and the people that love and advocate for them can use the ideas and activities in TAPESTRIES to weave a colorful, and meaningful dialogue about change and loss and how this impacts development, ideas about their loss stories and as a foundation for hope. Appropriate for established advocates and for any program looking for relevant and resonant ways to interact and engage with new and diverse participants in grief support and youth development programming.

Death came early and often to the people of Tokugawa Japan, as it did to the rest of the pre-modern world. Yet the Japanese reaction to death struck foreign observers and later scholars as particularly subdued. In this pioneering study, Harold Bolitho translates and analyzes some extraordinary accounts written by three Japanese men of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries about the death of a loved one-testimonies that challenge the impression that the Japanese accepted their bereavements with nonchalance. The three accounts were written by a young Buddhist priest mourning the death of his child, by the poet Issa, who recorded his father's final illness, and by a scholar and teacher who described his wife's losing struggle with diabetes. Placing their journals in the context of contemporary religious beliefs, customs and literary traditions, Bolitho offers provocative insights into a previously hidden world of Japanese grief.