Death is a hard topic to talk about, but exploring it openly can lead to a new understanding about how to live. In this series of eighteen essays, college students examine death in new ways. Their essays provide remarkable ideas about how death can transform people and societies.

Alfred G. Killilea, a professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island, teams up with former student Dylan D. Lynch and various contributors to share insights about a multitude of issues tied to death, including terrorists, child soldiers, Nazism, fascism, suicide, capital punishment and the Black Death.

Other essays explore death themes in classic and contemporary literature, such as in Dante, Peter Pan, Kurt Vonnegut, and Christopher Hitchens. Still others explore death in modern context, considering the work of Jane Goodall, the threat of death on Mount Everest, the origins of the "Grim Reaper," and how violent street gangs deal with death.

At a time when American politics suffers from deep ideological divisions that could make our nation ungovernable, our mutual mortality may be the most potent force for unifying us and helping us to find common ground.

Simultaneously real and unreal, the dead are people, yet they are not. The society of medieval Europe developed a rich set of imaginative traditions about death and the afterlife, using the dead as a point of entry for thinking about the self, regeneration, and loss. These macabre preoccupations are evident in the widespread popularity of stories about the returned dead, who interacted with the living both as disembodied spirits and as living corpses or revenants. In Afterlives, Nancy Mandeville Caciola explores this extraordinary phenomenon of the living's relationship with the dead in Europe during the five hundred years after the year 1000.Caciola considers both Christian and pagan beliefs, showing how certain traditions survived and evolved over time, and how attitudes both diverged and overlapped through different contexts and social strata. As she shows, the intersection of Christian eschatology with various pagan afterlife imaginings-from the classical paganisms of the Mediterranean to the Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, and Scandinavian paganisms indigenous to northern Europe-brought new cultural values about the dead into the Christian fold as Christianity spread across Europe. Indeed, the Church proved surprisingly open to these influences, absorbing new images of death and afterlife in unpredictable fashion. Over time, however, the persistence of regional cultures and beliefs would be counterbalanced by the effects of an increasingly centralized Church hierarchy. Through it all, one thing remained constant: the deep desire in medieval people to bring together the living and the dead into a single community enduring across the generations.

This collection of over 1100 epitaphs is not only the largest collection of epitaphs extant, it's the only one devoted to the epitaphs of ordinary people. Arranged by categories such as humor, eulogies, romantic, or borrowed quotes, it's an enlightening and sometime emotional window onto the final thoughts covering more than a thousand people. Sources of quotes have been annotated for relevance. Aside from being arranged by categories, each epitaph is indexed by first line and name(s) of the interred, as well as by cemetery. The majority of the entries are modern though some date as far back as the 1840s. All-in-all, an extraordinary glimpse into the lives of ordinary people and a reference book unlike any that have come before. It opens a new world in the study of folklore and anthropology. It mines untouched veins of gold. In many ways, epitaphs are haiku for the dead. They should be read with patience, discretion, and a glass of wine. Do not hurry through them.

By CreateSpace: As we move into the twenty-first century, the dynamics of the debate on euthanasia and assisted suicide have shifted from the "power and influence" to the "power and control." The religious industry is determined to dictate to everyone to live and die according to their dogmas and it is in everyone's best interest that we do not allow human rights and freedom of choice to be trampled on by pontificators. As such, this is a call to action by the silent majority against the vocal religious ultra-conservative minority that is dictating its non-secular ideology on everyone else. Hani Montan's latest demands to be heard-and requires that the majority seize control of their lives by controlling the ways and means of their deaths. The action needed is: first, is for the silent majority to shed its apathy and weed out through the ballot box and active campaigning the undemocratic and non-secular politicians who place God ahead of the country and the majority of its citizens. Too many unprincipled politicians' prime objective is just to survive in politics and they are a blot on democracy. Second, expose and boycott any religious establishment that is actively engaged in anti-euthanasia and anti-assisted suicide campaign because they are violating human rights and individuals' freedom of choice. It is the expectation in a democratic and secular society where religion and state are separate that the imposition of religious ideals on everyone is not acceptable. As a result, religious dogmas should not be allowed to control people's lives and religious leaders should have no undue influence on the social and political agendas of a democracy which, by definition, entitles people to have their own beliefs. Included in this should be the prerogative to choose the way they want to die. People who are in pain but believe in the sanctity of life and that the earthly suffering is good for their soul and want to exist till their last breath should be entitled to their beliefs. Others who want to prolong their life by few more days or months with palliative care and by taking heavy doses of tranquilizing drugs should also be entitled to do so. These death choices need to also extend their privileges to non-believers, to believers of science and the concept of evolution, and other terminally ill people who prefer euthanasia or assisted suicide as methods for terminating their lives that have become a misery. These people are equally entitled to their beliefs and deserve to have their human rights and freedom of choice respected. Containing many unique features, Montan's treatise gives such useful information as: samples to assist the readers in the preparation of their own legally binding "Advance Health Directive" which is now acceptable in many Western countries; a suggested updated version of the Hippocratic Oath to accommodate the subject of euthanasia and assisted suicide; and a general guide on methods and pro-euthanasia organizations specializing in the practice or advice on euthanasia and assisted suicide. A deeply thoughtful, expansive view on the rights of the dying, Death by Choice versus Religious Dogma is a book for everyone who is facing lingering death now and those who will be in similar predicament later. Euthanasia and assisted suicide is not only about the intolerance to pain or being a burden on the loved ones or the fear of dying without dignity, it is also about the loss of autonomy, loss of the ability to engage in activities that make life enjoyable, and the loss of control of bodily functions.

Hospices have played a critical role in transforming ideas about death and dying. Viewing death as a natural event, hospices seek to enable people approaching mortality to live as fully and painlessly as possible. Award-winning medical historian Emily K. Abel provides insight into several important issues surrounding the growth of hospice care. Using a unique set of records, Prelude to Hospice expands our understanding of the history of U.S. hospices. Compiled largely by Florence Wald, the founder of the first U.S. hospice, the records provide a detailed account of her experiences studying and caring for dying people and their families in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although Wald never published a report of her findings, she often presented her material informally. Like many others seeking to found new institutions, she believed she could garner support only by demonstrating that her facility would be superior in every respect to what currently existed. As a result, she generated inflated expectations about what a hospice could accomplish. Wald's records enable us to glimpse the complexities of the work of tending to dying people.

Death And Anti-Death, Volume 10: Ten Years After John Rawls (1921-2002) is edited by Charles Tandy, Ph.D. and Jack Lee, Ph.D.: ISBN 978-1-934297-15-5 is the Hardback edition and ISBN 978-1-934297-16-2 is the Paperback edition. Volume 10, as indicated by the anthology's subtitle, is in honor of John Rawls (1921-2002). The chapters do not necessarily mention him (but some chapters do). The chapters (by professional philosophers and other professional scholars) are directed to issues related to death, life extension, and anti-death, broadly construed. Most of the contributions consist of scholarship unique to this volume. As was the case with all previous volumes in the Death And Anti-Death Series By Ria University Press, the anthology includes an Index as well as an Abstracts section that serves as an extended table of contents. There are 11 chapters, as follows: ------CHAPTER ONE Autonomy, Contingency, And Mysticism: Three Critical Remarks On Cornelius Castoriadis' Understanding Of Human Mortality (by Giorgio Baruchello) pages 21-30; ------CHAPTER TWO Heidegger And Daoism On Mortality (by Wing-cheuk Chan) pages 31-54; ------CHAPTER THREE Autonomy In Moral And Political Philosophy (by John Christman) pages 55-94; ------CHAPTER FOUR A Fortunate Academic Life (by William Grey) pages 95-100; ------CHAPTER FIVE Who Is The Subject Of The Evil Of Death? (by Jack Lee) pages 101-114; ------CHAPTER SIX Is Death Necessarily Harmful? Some Reflections From A Daoist Perspective (by Shui-Chuen Lee) pages 115-130; ------CHAPTER SEVEN Our Global Problems And What We Need To Do About Them (by Nicholas Maxwell) pages 131-174; ------CHAPTER EIGHT Optimizing One's Immortality: Biostasis And The Philosophy Of Universal Immortalism (by R. Michael Perry) pages 175-212; ------CHAPTER NINE A Brief Inquiry Into Rawls' Religion: Providence, Individuals, And Redemption (by Charles Taliaferro) pages 213-224; ------CHAPTER TEN John Rawls, Albert Camus, And Our Common Task Of Intergenerational Justice (by Charles Tandy) pages 225-254; ------CHAPTER ELEVEN John Rawls (by Leif Wenar) pages 255-300; ------The INDEX begins on page 301.