Confronting The Good Death

Years before Hitler unleashed the “Final Solution” to annihilate European Jews, he began a lesser-known campaign to eradicate the mentally ill, which facilitated the gassing and lethal injection of as many as 270,000 people and set a precedent for the mass murder of civilians. In Confronting the “Good Death” Michael Bryant analyzes the U.S. government and West German judiciary’s attempt to punish the euthanasia killers after the war. The first author to address the impact of geopolitics on the courts’ representation of Nazi euthanasia, Bryant argues that international power relationships wreaked havoc on the prosecutions. Drawing on primary sources, this provocative investigation of the Nazi campaign against the mentally ill and the postwar quest for justice will interest general readers and provide critical information for scholars of Holocaust studies, legal history, and human rights. Support for this publication was generously provided by the Eugene M. Kayden Fund at the University of Colorado.

"Well organized, well argued, and well written . . . " —Choice "It is a lively document, with vigorous arguments leading to opinions that are controversial but strongly held." —Joseph M. Foley, Medical Humanities Review " . . . Momeyer's book has much to recommend it . . . The book would surely be a suitable focus for an undergraduate course in dealing with the philosophical issues involving death and our attitudes towards it." —David J. Mayo, Teaching Philosophy "This book is valuable and important in bringing conceptual clarification to questions about dealing with death that are so often neglected or mishandled by social scientists and the counseling industry." —Ethics An examination of the moral and philosophical issues at work in an individual's confrontation of death, not as a matter of psychological necessity or social conditioning, but as a function of reflection and the search for self-knowledge.

Having a good death is our final human right, argues Sandra Martin in this updated and expanded version of her bestselling and award-winning social history of the right to die movement in Canada and around the world. Winner of the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, finalist for both the Donner Prize in Public Policy and the Dafoe Prize for History, A Good Death has a new chapter on Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying Law. The law allows mentally competent adults, who are suffering grievously from incurable conditions, to ask for a doctor’s help in ending their lives. Does the law go far enough? No, says Martin. She delivers compelling stories about the patients the law ignores: people with life-crushing diseases who are condemned to suffer because their natural deaths are not reasonably foreseeable. With a clear analytical eye, she exposes the law’s shortcomings and outlines constitutional challenges, including the presumed right of publicly-funded faith-based institutions to deny suffering patients a legal medical service. Martin argues that Canada can set an example for the world if it can strike a balance between compassion for the suffering and protection of the vulnerable, between individual choice and social responsibility. A Good Death asks the tough question none of us can avoid: How do you want to die? The answer will change your life—and your death. “[An] excellent new book. . . .The timeliness is hard to overstate.” —The Globe and Mail “What truly distinguishes this book is the reportage on individuals and families who have fought to arrange for a better death. . . . These first-hand experiences are the beating heart of a timely and powerful examination.” —2017 BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction Jury Citation

"Confronting the Death Penalty probes how jurors make the ultimate decision about whether another human being should live or die. Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative linguistic methods, Robin Conley explores the means through which language helps to make death penalty decisions possible - how specific linguistic choices mediate and restrict jurors', attorneys', and judges' actions and experiences while serving and reflecting on capital trials."--Provided by publisher.

The national bestseller From the author of the bestselling More Beautiful Than Before comes an inspiring book about loss based on his most popular sermon. As the senior rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in the world, Steve Leder has learned over and over again the many ways death teaches us how to live and love more deeply by showing us not only what is gone but also the beauty of what remains. This inspiring and comforting book takes us on a journey through the experience of loss that is fundamental to everyone. Yet even after having sat beside thousands of deathbeds, Steve Leder the rabbi was not fully prepared for the loss of his own father. It was only then that Steve Leder the son truly learned how loss makes life beautiful by giving it meaning and touching us with love that we had not felt before. Enriched by Rabbi Leder's irreverence, vulnerability, and wicked sense of humor, this heartfelt narrative is filled with laughter and tears, the wisdom of millennia and modernity, and, most of all, an unfolding of the profound and simple truth that in loss we gain more than we ever imagined.

Few Canadians know of "Mr. L," an auto worker in Ontario who gave "the gift of life" in 1984 as part of a company blood donor drive. Many more will remember Kenneth Pittman, a 53-year-old heart patient, who died after being infected with AIDS -- from Mr. L's blood. They will also remember Mr. Pittman's wife, Rochelle, who contracted the virus from her husband because his doctor decided not to inform them of Mr. Pittman's fatal disease. This tragic story is a microcosm of Canada's blood scandal. For over a decade, bureaucratic dithering, profits-over-protection responses, a paternalistic medical establishment and uninformed victims combined to create the worst health-care disaster in Canadian history. More than 1,200 people have contracted AIDS from tainted blood -- and the dying continues. André Picard has produced the definitive analysis of this complex tragedy. All of the players are here -- public health officials who refused to take the "homosexual plague" seriously; the Red Cross, which worried about bad publicity and the bottom line; the too-little-too-late government that offered inadequate compensation for victims; and the arrogant medical establishment which sometimes took years to inform HIV patients of their condition; and most of all, the victims, who are paying for this betrayal with their lives. The Gift of Death is a call for a serious re-evaluation of an outdated blood system to ensure that a similar tragedy never occurs.

This spiritual companion for mourners affirms their need to mourn and invites them to journey through their very unique and personal grief. Detailed are the six needs that all mourners must yield to and eventually embrace if they are to go on to find continued meaning in life and living, including the need to remember the deceased loved one and the need for support from others. Short explanations of each mourning need are followed by brief, spiritual passages that, when read slowly and reflectively, help mourners work through their unique thoughts and feelings. Also included in this revised edition are journaling sections for mourners to write out their personal responses to each of the six needs. This replaces 1879651114.