'Catch the Sparrow is true crime at its most personal and purposeful - heartfelt and intimate, noble and determined, meticulous and brave' Robert Kolker, New York Times bestselling author of HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD and LOST GIRLS Growing up, Rachel Rear knew the story of Stephanie Kupchynsky's disappearance. The beautiful violinist and teacher had fled an abusive relationship on Martha's Vineyard and made a new start for herself near Rochester, NY. She was at the height of her life - in a relationship with a man she hoped to marry and close to her students and her family. And then, one morning, she was gone. Near Rochester - a region which has spawned such serial killers as Arthur Shawcross and the 'Double Initial' killer - Stephanie's disappearance was just another news item. But Rachel had more reason than most to be haunted by this particular story of a missing white woman: Rachel's mother had married Stephanie's father after the crime, and Rachel grew up in the shadow of her stepsister's legacy. In Catch the Sparrow, Rachel Rear writes a compulsively readable and unerringly poignant reconstruction of the dark and serpentine path, across more than two decades, to try to solve the case. Obsessively cataloging the crime and its costs, drawing intimately closer to the details than any journalist could, she reveals how a dysfunctional justice system laid the groundwork for Stephanie's murder and stymied the investigation for more than twenty years, and what those hard years meant for the lives of Stephanie's family and loved ones. Startling, unputdownable, and deeply moving, Catch the Sparrow is a retelling of a crime like no other.

Every living thing must die, but only human beings know it. This knowledge can bring to the living, anxiety and despair or new richness and meaning. This volume explores the problems and possibilities of coping with this universal experience.

Just as everyone must die, almost everyone will deal with death among close friends or loved ones. This collection explores the often difficult issues of human relationships with the dying, as well as the many stresses and burdens faced by the survivors.

This collection of articles is an outgrowth of the Death, Dying, Bereavement and Widowhood Interest Group of the Gerontological Society of America and comprises empirical accounts of several distinct family losses: the death of a spouse, sibling, parent, child, and grandchild. These articles represent normative and non-normative losses; the juxtaposition of short-term and long- term bereavement reactions; cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons; sociological, psychological, and psycholinguistic research paradigms; national and regional level data; and qualitative and quantitative analytic strategies. The articles and their approaches are as diverse and varied as are the experiences they describe, yet each contributes something of value to the more singular and superordinate goal of understanding kinship bereavement in the later years.

The intent of Death and Ethnicity emphasizes that death occurs to us as unique individuals living within particular sociocultural settings. Those who provide and plan services need to recognize both the differences among groups and the differences among individuals within these groups; and to provide options for those representative of their group as well as for those whose wants and needs are atypical. This book is valuable for those who plan projects, programs, courses, and services concerned with death and bereavement, and those who fund, plan, direct, and perform those services.

Near death experiences fascinate everyone, from theologians to sociologists and neuroscientists. This groundbreaking book introduces the phenomenon of NDEs, their personal impact and the dominant scientific explanations. Taking a strikingly original cross-cultural approach and incorporating new medical research, it combines new theories of mind and body with contemporary research into how the brain functions. Ornella Corazza analyses dualist models of mind and body, discussing the main features of NDEs as reported by many people who have experienced them. She studies the use of ketamine to reveal how characteristics of NDEs can be chemically induced without being close to death. This evidence challenges the conventional 'survivalist hypothesis', according to which the near death experience is a proof of the existence of an afterlife. This remarkable book concludes that we need to move towards a more integrated view of embodiment, in order to understand what human life is and also what it can be. Ornella Corazza is a NDE researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. In 2004-5 she was a Member of the 21st Century Centre of Excellence (COE) 'Program on the Construction of Death and Life Studies' at the University of Tokyo.

Grief and Bereavement in Contemporary Society is an authoritative guide to the study of and work with major themes in bereavement. Its chapters synthesize the best of research-based conceptualization and clinical wisdom across 30 of the most important topics in the field, including the implementation of specific models in clinical practice, family therapy for bereavement, complicated grief, spirituality, and more. The volume's contributors come from around the world, and their work reflects a level of cultural awareness of the diversity and universality of bereavement and its challenges that has rarely been approximated by other volumes. This is a readable, engaging, and comprehensive book that will share the most important scientific and applied work on the contemporary scene with a broad international audience, and as such, it will be an essential addition to anyone with a serious interest in death, dying, and bereavement.

"a must for any specialist and advanced practitioner's bookshelf." Journal of Interpersonal CareThis book focuses on what happens after a death has taken place. Drawing on social theory and anthropology, contributors examine responses to death as they occur within the unique set of cultural, social and historical circumstances which characterizes post-war society. The book does not just document and make sense of contemporary practices but also critically reviews the ways grief, mourning and death ritual have been approached by academics and practitioners in the field. It does this by combining substantial reviews with shorter illustrative examples of grief, mourning and death ritual as they are manifest in specific settings and with defined groups. These illustrative examples include personal and institutional responses to death at different points in the life cycle, and responses to different sorts of death - the death of children and death in disasters for example. The examples include commentaries on bereavement work and on changes in both the funeral industry and memorialization practices.Grief, Mourning and Death Ritual is aimed at advanced students in sociology, anthropology and psychology with an interest in death, dying and mortality. It is also directly relevant to those concerned with loss and how to respond to it. The book is therefore suitable for use on courses in nursing, palliative care, social work and counselling.

In this introductory text on thanatology, Alan Kemp continues to take on the central question of mortality: the centrality of death coupled with the denial of death in the human experience. Drawing from the work of Ernest Becker, Death, Dying, and Bereavement in a Changing World provides a multidisciplinary and multidimensional approach to the study of death, putting extra emphasis on the how death takes place in a rapidly changing world. This new, second edition includes the most up-to-date research, data, and figures related to death and dying. New research on the alternative death movement, natural disaster-related deaths, and cannabis as a form of treatment for life-threatening illnesses, and updated research on physician-assisted suicide, as well as on grief as it relates to the DSM-5 have been added.

What leads us to respond politically to the deaths of some citizens and not others? This is one of the critical questions Heather Pool asks in Political Mourning. Born out of her personal experiences with the trauma of 9/11, Pool's astute book looks at how death becomes political, and how it can mobilize everyday citizens to argue for political change. Pool examines four tragedies in American history-the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the lynching of Emmett Till, the September 11 attacks, and the Black Lives Matter movement-that offered opportunities to tilt toward justice and democratic inclusion. Some of these opportunities were taken, some were not. However, these watershed moments show, historically, how political identity and political responsibility intersect and how racial identity shapes who is mourned. Political Mourning helps explain why Americans recognize the names of Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland; activists took those cases public while many similar victims have been ignored by the news media. Concluding with an afterword on the coronavirus, Pool emphasizes the importance of collective responsibility for justice and why we ought to respond to tragedy in ways that are more politically inclusive.

The archaeology of death and burial is central to our attempts to understand vanished societies. Through the remains of funerary rituals we can learn not only about the attitudes of prehistoric people to death and the afterlife, but also about their way of life, their social organisation and their view of the world. This ambitious new book reviews the latest research in this huge and important field, and describes the sometimes controversial interpretations that have led to rapid advances in our understanding of life and death in the distant past. It provides a unique overview and synthesis of one of the most revealing fields of research into the past, It creates a context for several of archaeology's most breath-taking discoveries, from Tutankhamen to the Ice Man, and will find a keen market among archaeologists, historians and others who have a professional interest in, or general curiosity about, death and burial.

Loss and consequent grief permeates nearly every life changing event, from death to health concerns to dislocation to relationship breakdown to betrayal to natural disaster to faith issues. Yet, while we know about particular events of loss independently, we know very little about a psychology of loss that draws many adversities together. This universal experience of loss as a concept in its own right sheds light on so much of the work we do in the care of others. This book develops a new overarching framework to understand loss and grief, taking into account both pathological and wellbeing approaches to the subject. Drawing on international and cross-disciplinary research, Judith Murray highlights nine common themes of loss, helping us to understand how it is experienced. These themes are then used to develop a practice framework for structuring assessment and intervention systematically. Throughout the book, this generic approach is highlighted through discussing its use in different loss events such as bereavement, trauma, chronic illness and with children or older people. Having been used in areas as diverse as child protection, palliative care and refugee care, the framework can be tailored to a range of needs and levels of care. Caring for people experiencing loss is an integral part of the work of helping professions, whether it is explicitly part of their work such as in counselling, or implicit as in social work, nursing, teaching, medicine and community work. This text is an important guide for anyone working in these areas.

Throughout the centuries, different cultures have established a variety of procedures for handling and disposing of corpses. Often the methods are directly associated with the deceased's position in life, such as a pharaoh's mummification in Egypt or the cremation of a Buddhist. Treatment by the living of the dead over time and across cultures is the focus of study. Burial arrangements and preparations are detailed, including embalming, the funeral service, storage and transport of the body, and forms of burial. Autopsies and the investigative process of causes of deliberate death are fully covered. Preservation techniques such as cryonic suspension and mummification are discussed, as well as a look at the ?recycling? of the corpse through organ donation, donation to medicine, animal scavengers, cannibalism, and, of course, natural decay and decomposition. Mistreatments of a corpse are also covered.

One of the "New York Times"'s Best Ten Books of the Year
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
Winner of the 2014 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the "Los Angeles Times" Book Prize, and the Ridenhour Book Prize
An ALA Notable Book, finalist for the NYPL 2014 Helen Bernstein Award, finalist for the SIBA Book Award, and shortlisted for ALA Andrew Carnegie Medal
An NPR "Great Reads" Book, a "Chicago Tribune" Best Book, a "Seattle Times "Best Book, a "Time "Magazine Best Book, "Entertainment Weekly"'s #1 Nonfiction Book, a "Christian Science Monitor "Best Book, and a "Kansas City Star" Best Book
Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink's landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina - and her suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice.
In the tradition of the best investigative journalism, physician and reporter Sheri Fink reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and to maintain life amid chaos.
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"After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths.
"Five Days at Memorial," the culmination of six years of reporting, unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing the reader into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing.
In a voice at once involving and fair, masterful and intimate, Fink exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are in America for the impact of large-scale disasters--and how we can do better. A remarkable book, engrossing from start to finish, "Five Days at Memorial" radically transforms your understanding of human nature in crisis.

"From the Hardcover edition."

"Alessia Ricciardi's The Ends of Mourning is a cogently argued and beautifully written work that deals with the fascinating and timely question of mourning. Ricciardi's book advances the existing body of work on trauma by considering the place of mourning in the transition from modernity to postmodernity. This place is, we learn, a missing place, for there is an important sense in which mourning is absent from the collective theoretical consciousness of our time; with a few exceptions, theory of the postmodern era has tended to promote a sense of the post-historical, as though we could somehow be simply free and clear of the past without ever having to mourn it." --Peter Connor, Barnard College
"Alessia Ricciardi's truly outstanding book makes a significant contribution to critical theory in general and to psychoanalytically informed cultural criticism in particular. In many respects, it will prove to be a landmark study. . . . The End of Mourning is an extensive, brilliant, and brilliantly executed exposition of a complex and challenging theoretical and historical argument: that twentieth-century culture and thought has been impoverished--in spite of a fascination and indeed obsession with all things historical--by refusal to consider the implications of Freud's emphasis on mourning as a proper way of relating to the past." --Ulrich Baer, New York University

McIlwain (culture and communication, New York U.) examines Americans' shifting focus on death as a feared private experience to a no longer taboo topic of public discourse. Through a survey of death-related television programming since the 1970s, e.g., Six Feet Under and Crossing Over, he traces trends. He also discusses online virtual communities

When a family member or close friend dies, it can be difficult to know how best to help the children and teenagers involved. Someone Very Important Has Just Died is a practical book written for those caring for children and teenagers suffering a close bereavement. Intended for use immediately or soon after the death has occurred, this book gives practical and detailed guidance on what adults might say and do to help children.;This much-needed resource tackles the sensitive issues of what to tell children, how far to include them in the events immediately after the death, and how to tend to their physical and emotional needs. The material is suitable for anyone regardless of their background and beliefs, and is supplemented with information on where to go to obtain longer term bereavement support.;Someone Very Important Has Just Died is an ideal resource for professionals in all areas of work relating to bereavement. It is designed to be given to adults with children in their care at the time of a death.

In zahlreichen Landern wird uber das Thema "Selbstbestimmung am Ende des Lebens" diskutiert. Dabei gehen die Auffassungen weit auseinander, in welchen Formen die Autonomie Schwerkranker und Sterbender rechtlich abzusichern ist bzw. welche objektiven Grenzen die Rechtsordnung der Selbstbestimmung und Selbstverwirklichung ziehen oder anderen Disziplinen (insbesondere der medizinischen Wissenschaft) uberantworten darf. Die hier vorgelegte Dokumentation umfasst 23 Landesberichte, die diese und weitere (vor allem zivilrechtliche) Fragen der Patientenautonomie am Ende des Lebens aus dem jeweiligen nationalen Blickwinkel aufarbeiten. Die Dokumentation soll dazu beitragen, auslandische Erfahrungen in die Diskussion um die Fortentwicklung des deutschen Rechts einzubringen; sie soll daruber hinaus aber auch den internationalen Diskurs um das rechtliche Umfeld von - im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes - "Lebensentscheidungen" fordern.
The topic of "patient autonomy at the end of life" is currently under discussion in various countries. The opinions differ about the legal means of securing the autonomy of fatally ill patients on the one hand and about the limits of selfdetermination on the other hand. This documentation contains 23 country reports presenting a thorough picture of the national regulations in the field of private law to safeguard the autonomy of patients at the end of their life. It was prepared as a contribution to the "63. Deutscher Juristentag 2000" (63rd German lawyers'conference) where (from the German point of view) the question will be discussed whether additional private law regulations are recommendable to safeguard the autonomy of patients at the end of life. The documentation also aims at intensifying the international discourse on the legal aspects of what may - in the utmost sense of the world - be called "life decisions.""

Myths and related stories describe essential human experience which, requiring the use of the imagination, reconcile and give voice to fantasy and reality. In this book the author reflects on the processes of grief and more than 50 folk tales are included. The ancient stories vividly convey mankind's struggle with death and loss, the despair and hope, with bitterness and love. The use of stories in therapy is explained, specifically bereavement counselling through storymaking.

In past centuries, human responses to death were largely shaped by religious beliefs. Ralph Houlbrooke shows how the religious upheavals of the early modern period brought dramatic changes to this response, affecting the last rites, funerals, and ways of remembering the dead. He examines the interaction between religious innovation and the continuing need for reassurance and consolation on the part of the dying and the bereaved.

- How do the living maintain ongoing relationships with the dead in Western societies?
- How have the residual belongings of the dead been used to evoke memories?
- Why has the body and its material environment remained so important in memory-making?
Objects, images, practices, and places remind us of the deaths of others and of our own mortality. At the time of death, embodied persons disappear from view, their relationships with others come under threat and their influence may cease. Emotionally, socially, politically, much is at stake at the time of death. In this context, memories and memory-making can be highly charged, and often provide the dead with a social presence amongst the living. Memories of the dead are a bulwark against the terror of forgetting, as well as an inescapable outcome of a life's ending.
Objects in attics, gardens, museums, streets and cemeteries can tell us much about the processes of remembering. This unusual and absorbing book develops perspectives in anthropology and cultural history to reveal the importance of material objects in experiences of grief, mourning and memorializing. Far from being 'invisible', the authors show how past generations, dead friends and lovers remain manifest - through well-worn garments, letters, photographs, flowers, residual drops of perfume, funerary sculpture. Tracing the rituals, gestures and materials that have been used to shape and preserve memories of personal loss, Hallam and Hockey show how material culture provides the deceased with a powerful presence within the here and now.

Holocaust Images and Picturing Catastrophe explores the phenomenon of Holocaust transfer, analysing the widespread practice of using the Holocaust and its imagery for the representation and recording of other historical events in various media sites. It investigates the use of Holocaust imagery in political and legal discourses, in critical thinking and philosophy, as well as in popular culture, to provide a fresh theorisation of the manner in which the Holocaust comes loose from its historical context and is applied to events and campaigns in the contemporary public sphere. Richly illustrated with concrete examples, including prominent, international animal rights activism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the genocide in Rwanda, this book traces the visual rhetoric of Holocaust imagery and its application to events other than the genocide of Jewish people With its discussion of the wide range of issues arising with this form of 'Holocaust-transfer', the generalization of the Holocaust as a metaphor in representations of catastrophe, as well as in other cultural locations, Holocaust Images and Picturing Catastrophe will appeal to those working in the fields of holocaust studies, cultural and visual culture studies, sociology, and media studies.

Although much has been published on the social history of death, this is the first book to give a comprehensive account of attitudes toward the dead--above all the "placing" of the dead, in physical, spiritual and social terms--in order to reveal the social and religious outlook of past societies. The contributions range widely geographically, from Scotland to Transylvania, and address a spectrum of themes: attitudes toward the corpse, patterns of burial, forms of commemoration, the treatment of dead infants, the nature of the afterlife, and ghosts.