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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Death & dying > General
It’s midsummer in Wyoming and Alexandra Fuller is barely hanging on.
Grieving her father and pining for her home country of Zimbabwe,
reeling from a midlife breakup, freshly sober and piecing her way
uncertainly through a volatile new relationship with a younger woman,
Alexandra vows to get herself back on even keel.
And then – suddenly and incomprehensibly – her son Fi, at twenty-one
years old, dies in his sleep.
No stranger to loss – young siblings, a parent, a home country –
Alexandra is nonetheless levelled. At the same time, she is painfully
aware that she cannot succumb and abandon her two surviving daughters
as her mother before her had done. From a sheep wagon deep in the
mountains of Wyoming to a grief sanctuary in New Mexico to a silent
meditation retreat in Alberta, Canada, Alexandra journeys up and down
the spine of the Rocky Mountains in an attempt to find how to grieve
herself whole. There is no answer, and there are countless answers – in
poetry, in rituals and routines, in nature and in the indigenous wisdom
she absorbed as a child in Zimbabwe. By turns disarming, devastating
and unexpectedly, blessedly funny, Alexandra recounts the wild medicine
of painstakingly grieving a child in a culture that has no instructions
for it.
A hair-raising account about the ins and outs of practising
forensic pathology in Africa As a medical detective of the modern
world, forensic pathologist Ryan Blumenthal's chief goal is to
bring perpetrators to justice. He has performed thousands of
autopsies, which have helped bring numerous criminals to book. In
Autopsy he covers the hard lessons learnt as a rookie pathologist,
as well as some of the most unusual cases he's encountered. During
his career, for example, he has dealt with high-profile deaths,
mass disasters, death by lightning and people killed by African
wildlife. Blumenthal takes the reader behind the scenes at the
mortuary, describing a typical autopsy and the instruments of the
trade. He also shares a few trade secrets, like how to establish
when a suicide is more likely to be a homicide. Even though they
cannot speak, the dead have a lot to say - and Blumenthal is there
to listen.
A basic motivation for social and cultural life is the problem of
death. By analysing the experiences of dying and bereaved people,
as well as institutional responses to death, Clive Seale shows its
importance for understanding the place of embodiment in social
life. He draws on a comprehensive review of sociological,
anthropological and historical studies, including his own research,
to demonstrate the great variability that exists in human social
constructions for managing mortality. Far from living in a 'death
denying' society, dying and bereaved people in contemporary culture
are often able to assert membership of an imagined community,
through the narrative reconstruction of personal biography, drawing
on a variety of cultural scripts emanating from medicine,
psychology, the media and other sources. These insights are used to
argue that the maintenance of the human social bond in the face of
death is a continual resurrective practice, permeating everyday
life.
The academic study of death rose to prominence during the 1960s.
Courses on some aspect of death and dying can now be found at most
institutions of higher learning. These courses tend to stress the
psycho-social aspects of grief and bereavement, however, ignoring
the religious elements inherent to the subject. This collection is
the first to address the teaching of courses on death and dying
from a religious-studies perspective.
The book is divided into seven sections. The hope is that this
volume will not only assist teachers in religious studies
departments to prepare to teach unfamiliar and emotionally charged
material, but also help to unify a field that is now widely
scattered across several disciplines.
Everyone in the neighborhood was getting ready for the party.
Everyone knew somebody on the guest list. . . .
This was the day the dead returned.
There's a party tonight, but Cala doesn't want to go. While her family
prepares for the celebration, Cala grieves her grandfather and tries to
pretend she's not afraid.
But when she is separated from her family at the cemetery, Cala
encounters four mysterious riders who will show her she is actually
quite brave after all.
Brimming with magic and humor, The Invisible Parade is the first
picture-book collaboration between award-winner John Picacio and New
York Times bestselling Leigh Bardugo. Set on the night of Día de
Muertos, Cala's story is one of love, loss, and the courage that can be
found in unexpected places.
* PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY * The compelling and moving memoir of
forensic psychiatrist Dr Duncan Harding
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