In this resourceful compilation, Anderson, a radio producer and freelance writer (Affairs in Order: A Complete Resource Guide to Death and Dying), provides 110 interviews about dying that she conducted with a wide cross section of Americans?from waitresses and artists to physicians and teenagers. Interwoven through the interviews is a chronology of Western ideas about death (from 100,000 B.C., when the practice of burial began, to the 1990s, with a California jeweler's creation of "dead baby" necklaces). Anderson concludes that Western society, with the aid of the mass media and our cultural emphasis on scientific rationality, supports a denial of death and encourages people to shrink from confronting their own mortality. A significant number of participants, however, were willing to view death in a more spiritual light, either through Eastern traditions or through the rituals of their particular religions, and this point of view the author endorses. Several contributions come from people forced to deal with death at an early age?such as inner-city teenagers whose friends have been shot or those with friends (or patients) dying from AIDS. Anderson's intriguing survey of this once taboo topic is well worth a look.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
One thing we can count on in life is death, and to deny it is to deny ourselves. In this work, Anderson (When Passion Reigned: Sex and the Victorians, LJ 7/95) gives voice to the experiences, feelings, and beliefs about death in 60 interviews with diverse Americans. What emerges is a sense that there is something wrong with the way Americans die in this age of modern science and the diminished role of religion in society. Science has reduced infant mortality rates and allowed us to live longer yet does not assist us in death. Meaningful ritual is no longer available at funeral services. In the course of the interviews, Rabbi Sharon Klienbaum explains that rituals around death and mourning are designed to make us look at our own lives, not to make an uncomfortable cocktail party, and junior high students share their experience with gang deaths and funerals they've attended. Americans could learn a great deal about living by sharing their fears of death. Recommended for public libraries.?Leo Kriz, West Des Moines P.L., Iowa
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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