A transformative, fascinating theory—based on robust and groundbreaking experimental research—reveals how our unconscious fear of death powers almost everything we do, shining a light on the hidden motives that drive human behaviorMore than one hundred years ago, the American philosopher William James dubbed the knowledge that we must die “the worm at the core” of the human condition. In 1974, cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker won the Pulitzer Prize for his boo...

Exploring a new approach to interfaith/interreligious communication, the contributors to this collection seek to interact from the perspective of their own tradition or academic discipline with Ernest Becker's theory on the relationship between religion, culture, and the human awareness of death and mortality. While much interfaith/interreligious dialogue focuses on beliefs and practices, thus delineating areas of disagreement as a starting point, these chapters foster interactive communic...

In Facing Cancer and the Fear of Death: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Treatment, Dr. Norman Straker proposes that “death anxiety” is responsible for the American society’s failure to address costly futile care at the end of life; more specifically, doctors default on the appropriate prescription of palliative care because of this anxiety. This leads to unnecessary suffering for terminally-ill patients and their families and significant distress for physicians. To address these challenges...

Concerns with how students are taught, and whether and how they learn, has become particularly salient in higher education. This is evident in growing awareness of increases in time-to-degree and declines in attainment rates for many students, including those who are underrepresented, in our nation’s community and public and private colleges and universities. It is also demonstrated vis-à-vis recent findings that more than a third of college students evinced no noticeable improvement in cr...

**#1 New York Times BestsellerIn Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending**Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the huma...

Contents Introduction United States : Aryan Brotherhood, Barrio Azteca, Black Guerrilla Family, The Mexican Mafia or 'La eMe', Nazi Low Riders, Nuestra Familia, Tango Blast, Texas Syndicate. The Rest of the World : Australia – The Overcoat Gang and Prisoners of War, Brazil – Primeiro Comando da Capital, Puerto Rico – Ñeta Asociación, South Africa – The Numbers Gangs, Sweden – Brödraskapet, United Kingdom – Muslim Gangs. &n...

"A powerful and affecting memoir—reminiscent of Sebald." —Philipp Meyer, author of American RustChain-smoking, peculiarly stylish, stubborn, and eccentric—Vera and István were anything but ordinary grandparents. Sixteen years after their death, Johanna Adorján fills the gaps in their story. An Exclusive Love is a brilliantly constructed memoir and a gorgeous romance, a tale of two people who died as they lived: inseparable.

Worldwide, more people die by suicide than by murder, and many more are left behind to grieve. Despite distressing statistics that show suicide rates rising, the subject, long a taboo, is infrequently talked about. In this sweeping intellectual and cultural history, poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht channels her grief for two friends lost to suicide into a search for history’s most persuasive arguments against the irretrievable act, arguments she hopes to bring back into public con...

Why do some parents refuse to vaccinate their children? Why do some people keep guns at home, despite scientific evidence of risk to their family members? And why do people use antibiotics for illnesses they cannot possibly alleviate? When it comes to health, many people insist that science is wrong, that the evidence is incomplete, and that unidentified hazards lurk everywhere. In Denying to the Grave, Gorman and Gorman, a father-daughter team, explore the psychology of health sc...

The author of The Road Less Traveled, the bestselling and most influential book of psychiatric and spiritual instruction in modern times, now offers a deeply moving meditation on what euthanasia reveals about the status of the soul in our age. Its trenchant and sensitive treatment of the subject will define our humanity for generations to come.

Practical supportive advice for bereaved parents and the professionals who work with them, based on the experiences of psychiatric and religious counselors.FROM THE INTRODUCTION:“Certainly, in the early days after our son died, no one could have patted us on the our heads and convinced us everything would be all right. Nor will this book do that for you. It will, with the help of parents who have successfully coped and professional people who work with bereavement, offer gui...

There is nothing more life-affirming than understanding death in all its forms.Natural selection depends on death; little would evolve without it. Every animal on Earth is shaped by its presence and fashioned by its spectre. We are all survivors of starvation, drought, volcanic eruptions, meteorites, plagues, parasites, predators, freak weather events, tussles and scraps, and our bodies are shaped by these ancient events.Some animals live for just a few hou...