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Speaking of Death America's New Sense of Mortality

Michael K. Bartalos

Foreword by Robert Belknap, Ph.D.

Book Code: C36426

ISBN: 0-313-36426-5

ISBN-13: 978-0-313-36426-6

DOI:

Praeger Publishers

Publication: 11/30/2008

List Price: $49.95 (UK Sterling Price: £27.95)

Availability: Not yet published. (Estimated publication date, 11/30/2008)

Media Type: Hardcover

Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4

Subjects:

Series Title: Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality

Description: In the post-9/11 moments, months and years, America has come to develop a new mortality awareness. Death, and our understanding that it can be sudden and is certainly inevitable, is being talked about more than ever before. As the team in this volume shows through groundbreaking research, surveys, interviews, and vignettes, death awareness has grown strong, and has changed the way we think and act, not only in relation to ourselves and our loved ones, but in relation to society overall. Those changes include nuances from increases in the number and size of college courses focused on death, death books, death photography, and popular television shows dealing with death, as well as the recording and dissemination of death videos from those that show family members dying peacefully to the execution of terrorists or their captives. Impromptu street creations to memorialize common people who have died have emerged, as have new ways to dispose of dead bodies, including blasting ashes into space or placing them under the sea or giving them a "green" resting place in a natural forest. Our means of grieving, coping, and beliefs about afterlife have been altered, too. This work also includes a look at cosmologists and physicists who have revised their theories on humanity's legacy when our world meets a fateful end, who propose a means by which mankind's achievements might survive indefinitely, transporting from one universe to another without violating the known laws of physics. This book will intrigue all with an interest in considering not only death and how 9/11 changed America's views on and beliefs about it, but also considering what could lie beyond that end for all of us.

Table of Contents:

Foreword
Preface
Introduction - The Age of Encounter The New Reality
Part I Manifestations of Mortality Awareness
Chapter 1: From Concealment to Recognition- The Discourse on Death, Dying and Grief
Chapter 2: Cancer Patients Facing Death: Is the Patient Who Focuses on Living in Denial of His/Her Death?
Chapter 3: Afterlife in Modern America: The Public Sentiment
Chapter 4: Life Extension: Proponents, Opponents, and the Social Impact of the Defeat of Death
Chapter 5: Covering (Up) Death: A Close Reading of Timef magazine's September 11, 2001 Special Issue
Part II From Awareness to Acceptance
Chapter 6: Acceptance of Mortality: What Is Confirmed, What Is Denied?
Chapter 7: Death, Terror, Culture, and Violence: A Psychoanalytic Perspective
Chapter 8: When the Time Is Ripe for Acceptance: Dying, with a Small d
Chapter 9: Alive and Content: The Art of Living with Mortality
Part III Societal Aspects of the Acceptance of Dying
Chapter 10: Coping with Mortality: A Societal Perspective
Chapter 11: The Quest for Permanence: Scientific Visions of Surviving the Eventual Demise of Our Universe
Series Afterword by J. Harold Ellens
About the Editor and Contributors

LC Card Number: 2008029551

LCC Class: BD444

Dewey Class: 306


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