About this product: When a loved one dies it can seem like life will never be normal again. The world can become a blur of flowers, relatives, cards, and well-meaning visitors; and the griever may feel that he or she cannot come up for air. But there is normalcy after death, say authors Zonnebelt-Smeenge and De Vries; it just takes some time--and help--to get there. Traveling through Grief takes readers on the journey toward life after death, focusing on five common tasks of grief: accepting the reality of death, embracing all the emotions associated with death, storing memories, separating oneself from the deceased, and reinvesting fully in one's own life. This book is the perfect gift for a grieving friend or tool for a loved one in need.
About this product: After several years of writing a regular column about the despair, anger and confusion she felt after the death of her only child, Marie Levine weaves the story of her own bereavement into a collection of essays, poems and writings that chronicle her own surviving mother's journey. As a nightmarish reality envelops her, Marie describes the ultimate restoration of hope and healing as she learns to live a whole new life she could never have imagined.
About this product: Once a prominent radio reporter, Mumia Abu-Jamal is now in a Pennsylvania prison awaiting his state-sactioned execution. In 1982 he was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner after a trial many have criticized as profoundly biased. Live From Death Row is a collection of his prison writings--an impassioned yet unflinching account of the brutalities and humiliations of prison life. It is also a scathing indictment of racism and political bias in the American judicial system that is certain to fuel the controversy surrounding the death penalty and freedom of speech.
About this product: This book is concerned with practical ethics, a very old branch of philosophy with a long history all the way from the Greeks. For the Greeks, philosophy was not an academic affair ---politics and ethics dealt with real problems of the day. That trend withered as time went on. This book applies tools of philosophy to real life problems such as abortion, infanticide, war, and suicide. The most interesting aspect of the book is that it does not push any particular point of view. Instead it takes each problem and describes various attempts to deal with it. For example abortion: some people believe abortion is wrong because the foetus has life and life is sacred, others believe that the foetus's right can be overridden by the right for the mother to make a choice about her own life. Neither position is completely defensible logically and both have their slippery points. Glover takes each of these viewpoints and analyzes its pros and cons. It is up to the reader to understand these arguments and make a judgement about where they stand. This is the best book to understand controversial issues such as infanticide, capital punishment and abortion without getting caught up in false rhetoric. Once you read this book, you will see these issues differently; with less surety and more humility.
About this product: This volume provides a guide to the reader in listening to early Jewish stories about holy figures which appear to have been first told between 150BCE and 150CE. Following new translations, the book provides a close hearing of the oral storytelling that generated these narratives now surviving only in literary form. It argues that historical folklore must reconstruct storytelling performance from literary remains. Making use of contemporary folklore methods, the author examines the text, texture and context of over 100 stories, including birth prophesies, provision legends, prophetic stories of destruction or deliverance and tales of martyrdom. A broad range of stories of these four types is presented in a way that reveals and illuminates the oral patterns and characteristics of the storytellers. The stories are drawn from apocryphal and pseudepigraphal literature, Early Jewish historians, first-century Christian texts and the Mishnah and early Talmudic writings. The Christian tradition is included here because it was generated within sectarian Judaism and the first reports about Jesus appeared from Jewish storytellers. This work aims to shift the attention of biblical scholars and historians of religion away from an exclusive focus on the thought and art of writers and authors, and toward a wider recognition of the work of the storytellers, men and women alike, who generated the traditions that ultimately came to be preserved in written form.
About this product: Inscribed on a wall at Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is a quote from the Bible: "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). On the other side of the lobby, five rows of stars are etched into the white marble wall, each representing a CIA officer killed in the line of duty. Below the stars is a case containing the "Book of Honor"--"a tome as sacred to the Agency as if it held a splinter of the true cross," writes Ted Gup--and in it are the names of the men and women who gave their lives serving the CIA. Well, not all the names; about half the entries are blank because the CIA says it doesn't want to compromise ongoing operations. Yet, as Gup argues in his own tome, also called The Book of Honor, the truth behind many of the stories that aren't being told threatens nothing--except perhaps the agency's own sense of shame over botched operations.
Gup, a well-known investigative reporter with experience at The Washington Post and Time, interviewed hundreds of current and former CIA case officers to tell the stories behind the stars. "In the aggregate, the stories of the stars form a kind of constellation that, once connected, reveal not only the CIA's history but something of its soul as well," he writes. Yet this is, thankfully, not an indiscrete book. He writes of "a young woman who died a violent and selfless death in 1996 ... her name is withheld from this book. The Agency made a compelling case that to identify her would put others at risk." The bulk of The Book of Honor does, in fact, name names and describe how they died. In this sense, it is similar to the runaway bestseller Blind Man's Bluff, which described the secret history of American submarine espionage during the cold war. Yet what's most striking about Gup's accounts is how many of the deaths were routine or accidental. Many agents merely had the misfortune of being on planes that crashed--hardly the stuff of a James Bond adventure. Throughout, Gup is sensitive to a situation in which, "between the values of an open society and the demands of a craft rooted in deception and betrayal, the CIA is asked to steer an uneasy, often irreconcilable course." This fascinating book strikes a clean blow for the open society--but it serves a larger purpose as well: telling the truth. --John J. Miller
About this product: P.M.H. Atwater was born in Twin Falls, Idaho, and died in Boise, Idaho. Yes, the author of this book died- three times to be exact. Since those experiences, she has traveled, studied, spoken and written about what happened to her and others when they died. Considered an authority on death, near death, and the afterlife, Atwater has written a book that gives details and deep insights into what really happens when you die and what it truly means. She also explores such mysteries as heaven and hell, the souls’ existence after death, the power of prayer, and delves into the truths and myths about death that may shed new light on the real truth about life and living.
About this product: Progress in medical science has increased our understanding of what happens when the brain begins to fail. Psychology delves ever more deeply into the nature of the self. In Dying to Live, Blackmore, a leading expert in near-death experiences, explores what psychology, biology, and medicine have to say about this extraordinary aspect of death and dying.
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