Ways of Dying

Ways of Dying PDF Author: Zakes Mda
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195714982
Category : Blacks
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Ways of Dying tells the story of the eccentric but dignified professional mourner, Toloki. His odyssey takes him from a rural village community to the shabby, vibrant outskirts of a contemporary South African city, where the tenderness that springs up between him and the beautiful and tragic Noria helps them to heal the past. By turns magical, brutal, and funny, this compelling work is a major new contribution to South African writing.

Ways of Dying

Ways of Dying PDF Author: Zakes Mda
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195714982
Category : Blacks
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book

Book Description
Ways of Dying tells the story of the eccentric but dignified professional mourner, Toloki. His odyssey takes him from a rural village community to the shabby, vibrant outskirts of a contemporary South African city, where the tenderness that springs up between him and the beautiful and tragic Noria helps them to heal the past. By turns magical, brutal, and funny, this compelling work is a major new contribution to South African writing.

Love and Other Ways of Dying

Love and Other Ways of Dying PDF Author: Michael Paterniti
Publisher: Dial Press
ISBN: 0812997514
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS • In this moving, lyrical, and ultimately uplifting collection of essays, Michael Paterniti turns a keen eye on the full range of human experience, introducing us to an unforgettable cast of everyday people. Michael Paterniti is one of the most original and empathic storytellers working today. His writing has been described as “humane, devastating, and beautiful” by Elizabeth Gilbert, “spellbinding” by Anthony Doerr, and “expansive and joyful” by George Saunders. In the seventeen wide-ranging essays collected for the first time in Love and Other Ways of Dying, he brings his full literary powers to bear, pondering happiness and grief, memory and the redemptive power of human connection. In the remote Ukranian countryside, Paterniti picks apples (and faces mortality) with a real-life giant; in Nanjing, China, he confronts a distraught jumper on a suicide bridge; in Dodge City, Kansas, he takes up residence at a roadside hotel and sees, firsthand, the ways in which the racial divide turns neighbor against neighbor. In each instance, Paterniti illuminates the full spectrum of human experience, introducing us to unforgettable everyday people and bygone legends, exploring the big ideas and emotions that move us. Paterniti reenacts François Mitterrand’s last meal in a rustic dining room in France and drives across America with Albert Einstein’s brain in the trunk of his rental car, floating in a Tupperware container. He delves with heartbreaking detail into the aftermath of a plane crash off the coast of Nova Scotia, an earthquake in Haiti, and a tsunami in Japan—and, in searing swirls of language, unearths the complicated, hidden truths these moments of extremity teach us about our ability to endure, and to love. Michael Paterniti has spent the past two decades grappling with some of our most powerful subjects and incomprehensible events, taking an unflinching point of view that seeks to edify as it resists easy answers. At every turn, his work attempts to make sense of both love and loss, and leaves us with a profound sense of what it means to be human. As he writes in the Introduction to this book, “The more we examine the grooves and scars of this life, the more free and complete we become.” Praise for Michael Paterniti and Love and Other Ways of Dying “One of the best books I’ve read all year . . . These pieces are exceptional artifacts of literary journalism.”—Mark O’Connell, Slate “These pieces are extraordinary. . . . Journalism elevated beyond its ordinary capacities, well into the realm of literature.”—Columbia Journalism Review “A fearless, spellbinding collection of inquiries by a brilliant, globally minded essayist whose writing is magic and whose worldview brims with compassion . . . The size of Michael Paterniti’s curiosity is matched only by the size of his heart.”—Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See “Michael Paterniti is a genius.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of The Signature of All Things “One of the best living practitioners of the art of literary journalism, able to fully elucidate and humanize the everyday and the epic.”—Dave Eggers, author of The Circle “In each of these essays, Michael Paterniti unveils life for us, the beauty and heartbreak of it, as we would never see it ourselves but now can never forget it. Paterniti is brilliant—a rare master—and one of my favorite authors on earth.”—Lily King, author of Euphoria

Top Five Regrets of the Dying

Top Five Regrets of the Dying PDF Author: Bronnie Ware
Publisher: Hay House, Inc
ISBN: 1401956009
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide with translations in 29 languages. After too many years of unfulfilling work, Bronnie Ware began searching for a job with heart. Despite having no formal qualifications or previous experience in the field, she found herself working in palliative care. During the time she spent tending to those who were dying, Bronnie's life was transformed. Later, she wrote an Internet blog post, outlining the most common regrets that the people she had cared for had expressed. The post gained so much momentum that it was viewed by more than three million readers worldwide in its first year. At the request of many, Bronnie subsequently wrote a book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, to share her story. Bronnie has had a colourful and diverse life. By applying the lessons of those nearing their death to her own life, she developed an understanding that it is possible for everyone, if we make the right choices, to die with peace of mind. In this revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide, with translations in 29 languages, Bronnie expresses how significant these regrets are and how we can positively address these issues while we still have the time. The Top Five Regrets of the Dying gives hope for a better world. It is a courageous, life-changing book that will leave you feeling more compassionate and inspired to live the life you are truly here to live.

A Better Way of Dying

A Better Way of Dying PDF Author: Jeanne Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101195606
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
The fail-safe plan for ensuring one's final wishes are respected Advanced directives and living wills have improved our ability to dictate end-of-life care, but even these cannot guaran­tee that we will be allowed the dignity of a natural death. Designed by two sisters-one a doctor, one a lawyer-and drawing on their decades of experience, the five-step Compassion Protocol outlined in A Better Way of Dying offers a simple and effective framework for leaving caretakers concrete, unambiguous, and legally binding instructions about your wishes for your last days. Meant for people in every walk of life-from the elderly, to those in the early stages of mentally degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, to healthy young people planning for an unpredictable future-this book creates space for a discussion we all must have if we wish to ensure comfort and control at the end of our lives..

We Know How This Ends

We Know How This Ends PDF Author: Bruce H. Kramer
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452945195
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Nautilus Book Awards — Silver Award Winner 2010 had been a very good year for Bruce H. Kramer. But what began as a floppy foot and leg weakness led to a shattering diagnosis: he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS is a cruel, unrelenting neurodegenerative disease in which the body’s muscles slowly weaken, including those used to move, swallow, talk, and ultimately breathe. There is no cure: ALS is a death sentence. When death is a constant companion, sitting too closely beside you at the dinner table, coloring your thoughts and feelings and words, your outlook on life is utterly transformed. The perspective and insights offered in We Know How This Ends reveal this daily reality and inspire a way forward for anyone who has suffered major loss and for anyone who surely will. Rather than wallowing in sadness and bitterness, anger and denial, Kramer accepted the crushing diagnosis. The educator and musician recognized that if he wanted a meaningful life, then embracing his imminent death was his only viable option. His decision was the foundation for profound, personal reflection and growth, even as his body weakened, and inspired him to share the lessons he was learning from ALS about how to live as fully as possible, even in the midst of devastating grief. At the time Kramer was diagnosed, broadcast journalist Cathy Wurzer was struggling with her own losses, especially her father’s slow descent into the bewildering world of dementia. Mutual friends put this unlikely pair—journalist and educator—together, and the serendipitous result has been a series of remarkable broadcast conversations, a deep friendship, and now this book. Written with wisdom, genuine humor, and down-to-earth observations, We Know How This Ends is far more than a memoir. It is a dignified, courageous, and unflinching look at how acceptance of loss and inevitable death can lead us all to a more meaningful and fulfilling life.

Lessons from the Dying

Lessons from the Dying PDF Author: Rodney Smith
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861711408
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
In everyday language, "Smith offers us important teachings and reflections for dealing with death and embracing life" (Jack Kornfield, author of "A Path with Heart").

Dying

Dying PDF Author: Pat McNees
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN: 9780446674003
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
In this treasury of life-affirming passages, more than 40 celebrated writers, thinkers, and religious figures from various faiths speak eloquently on the nature of dying and provide words of comfort for those left behind.

Things I've Learned from Dying

Things I've Learned from Dying PDF Author: David R. Dow
Publisher: Twelve
ISBN: 1455575232
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
"Every life is different, but every death is the same. We live with others. We die alone." In his riveting, artfully written memoir The Autobiography of an Execution, David Dow enraptured readers with a searing and frank exploration of his work defending inmates on death row. But when Dow's father-in-law receives his own death sentence in the form of terminal cancer, and his gentle dog Winona suffers acute liver failure, the author is forced to reconcile with death in a far more personal way, both as a son and as a father. Told through the disparate lenses of the legal battles he's spent a career fighting, and the intimate confrontations with death each family faces at home, THINGS I'VE LEARNED FROM DYING offers a poignant and lyrical account of how illness and loss can ravage a family. Full of grace and intelligence, Dow offers readers hope without cliché and reaffirms our basic human needs for acceptance and love by giving voice to the anguish we all face--as parents, as children, as partners, as friends--when our loved ones die tragically, and far too soon.

Dying of Whiteness

Dying of Whiteness PDF Author: Jonathan M. Metzl
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541644964
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
A physician's "provocative" (Boston Globe) and "timely" (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times Book Review) account of how right-wing backlash policies have deadly consequences -- even for the white voters they promise to help. In election after election, conservative white Americans have embraced politicians who pledge to make their lives great again. But as physician Jonathan M. Metzl shows in Dying of Whiteness, the policies that result actually place white Americans at ever-greater risk of sickness and death. Interviewing a range of everyday Americans, Metzl examines how racial resentment has fueled progun laws in Missouri, resistance to the Affordable Care Act in Tennessee, and cuts to schools and social services in Kansas. He shows these policies' costs: increasing deaths by gun suicide, falling life expectancies, and rising dropout rates. Now updated with a new afterword, Dying of Whiteness demonstrates how much white America would benefit by emphasizing cooperation rather than chasing false promises of supremacy. Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award

The Modern Art of Dying

The Modern Art of Dying PDF Author: Shai J. Lavi
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400826772
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
How we die reveals much about how we live. In this provocative book, Shai Lavi traces the history of euthanasia in the United States to show how changing attitudes toward death reflect new and troubling ways of experiencing pain, hope, and freedom. Lavi begins with the historical meaning of euthanasia as signifying an "easeful death." Over time, he shows, the term came to mean a death blessed by the grace of God, and later, medical hastening of death. Lavi illustrates these changes with compelling accounts of changes at the deathbed. He takes us from early nineteenth-century deathbeds governed by religion through the medicalization of death with the physician presiding over the deathbed, to the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. Unlike previous books, which have focused on law and technique as explanations for the rise of euthanasia, this book asks why law and technique have come to play such a central role in the way we die. What is at stake in the modern way of dying is not human progress, but rather a fundamental change in the way we experience life in the face of death, Lavi argues. In attempting to gain control over death, he maintains, we may unintentionally have ceded control to policy makers and bio-scientific enterprises.