Health - Death & dying
Wine Diva books

Books – Health – Death & dying

Books 1 to 15 of 15 – Death & dying

A Good Death  by Rodney Syme
A Good Death is Rodney Syme’s extraordinarily candid and controversial account of the many terminally ill people who he has assisted to end their lives. Over the last 30 years Syme, at first clandestinely and now publicly, has challenged the law on voluntary euthanasia, risking prosecution in doing so. He again risks prosecution for writing this book. A Good Death is a moving journey with those who came to Rodney Syme for help and a meditation on what it means to confront death in our culture. It is also a doctor’s personal story about the moral dilemmas and ethical choices he faces working within the grey areas of the law.In A Good Death Rodney Syme argues for the end of the unofficial ‘conspiracy’ of silence within the medical profession

Paperback,  320 pp,  $32.95. Buy now

Sweet Sorrow  by Mark Wakely
This remarkable book – at times heart-breaking, at times humorous – is dazzling for its profound honesty. Like most of us, Mark Wakely had always put death in the too-hard basket. Around death he was painfully awkward, strangely self-conscious: death-shy. He was curiously distanced from his own parents’ deaths. Thirty years later, he went on a journey to confront one of the most intensely personal yet universal experiences: our own mortality. With Mark as our guide, we are introduced to morticians and embalmers, rabbis and doctors, coffin makers and gravediggers. He reveals the fashions and the fads, the rituals and the deep emotion in a heartfelt and whimsical investigation into this timeless subject. All you need to pack for the trip is a

Paperback,  256 pp,  $32.95. Buy now

Last Rights  by Stephen P. Keirnan
In the 1970s, most Westerners died swiftly and brutally: of heart attacks, strokes, cancer or in accidents. But in the past three decades, medical advances have extended our lives and changed the way we die. In ‘Last Rights’, Stephen Kiernan reveals the disconnect between how patients want to live the end of life – pain free, functioning mentally and physically, surrounded by family and friends – and how the medical system continues to treat the dying – with extreme interventions, at immense cost, and with little regard to pain, human comforts, or even the stated wishes of patients and families. Backed with surveys, interviews, and intimate portraits of people from all walks of life.

Paperback,  320 pp,  $20.95. Buy now

Funeral Rights  by Robert Larkins
Australia’s ‘death-care’ industry is worth a staggering $700 million a year, and despite the fact that each of us will one day have to deal with those in the ‘dismal trade’, few of us know how the business of dying really works. In Funeral Rights, Robert Larkins lifts the lid on what goes on inside the mortuary and behind the cemetery walls. Eye-opening, empowering and often darkly amusing, his book demystifies death, dispels popular myths about funerals, and shows us better ways of conducting our final acts of love

Paperback,  336 pp,  $32.95. Buy now

Touched by Suicide  by Michael F. Myers and Carla Fine
Whether you are struggling with fresh grief at a loved oneas death by suicide or your loss happened years ago, you should know that you are not alone. 5 million Americans are affectedadirectly or indirectlyaby this tragedy each year. And it sends us on a lifelong search for answers, both to the practical questions and the deepest question of all: Why? In this definitive guide book, Michael F. Myers, MD, a leading psychiatrist, and Carla Fine, author of the acclaimed No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One, combine their perspectives as a physician and a survivor to offer compassionate and practical advice to anyone affected by suicide. BACKCOVER: Advance Praise for Touched by Suicide: aEach year suicide claims tens of t

Paperback,  304 pp,  $24.95. Buy now

Companions for the Passage  by Marjorie Ryerson
From the author of ‘Water Music’, ‘Companions For The Passage’ is an unforgettable book on a rarely visited subject: the personal accounts of those who have witnessed the death of a loved one. Author Marjorie Ryerson’s interviews capture the human condition through their wide variety of experiences and voices. Some of the interviews are religious, some not; some encouraged their loved ones to accept death, others to fight it to the end. There are stories of heroic nurses and of indifferent hospital bureaucracies. Possessing an affirmative quality that is anything but sentimental, these stories celebrate the experience of being present at the death of a loved one.

Paperback,  200 pp,  $20.95. Buy now

Death… And How to Survive It  by Kate Boydell
Nothing can shield you or prepare you for the brutal reality and crippling pain of a death and its repercussions. This book offers frank advice on coping with various aspects of the grieving process, such as: coping with the initial shock; telling your children; organising the funeral; shopping and cooking; and getting back into dating

Paperback,  288 pp,  $29.95. Buy now

The Quality of Mercy  by Ross Anderson
In May 1999, Ross Anderson’s wife and soul mate, Irene, was diagnosed with terminal, inoperable and incurable cancer of the pancreas. The medical profession gave her six months to live. Irene was determined to die with dignity. 1071 days later, her husband Ross fulfilled her wish, helping her to end her life with total disregard for the criminal implications. Irene died having been lovingly cared for by her husband and daughter. This is the story of an ordinary man who took the law into his own hands so he could comply with Irene’s wish to die on her own terms. It is a potent and controversial addition to the ongoing debate about assisted suicide.

Paperback,  132 pp,  $22.99. Buy now

Sacred Passage  by Margaret Coberly
This volume challenges readers to see death not as a tragedy or failure, but as a natural part of life that is in fact full of possibilities for the dying and their loved ones. Drawing on the wisdom of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, it offers advice on how to overcome fear and denial

Paperback,  176 pp,  $27.95. Buy now

In Your Own Time  by Elizabeth Lee
A compassionate and practical guide for anyone affected by serious illness. This text should empower patients – in hospital or at home – with the information they need to maintain the highest possible quality of life in their final days.

Paperback,  268 pp,  $44.95. Buy now

Living in the Light of Death  by Larry Rosenberg and David Guy
This book presents the Buddhist approach to facing the inevitable facts of growing older, getting sick, and dying. These tough realities are not given much attention by many people until midlife, when they become harder to avoid. Using a Buddhist text known as the Five Subjects for Frequent Recollection, Larry Rosenberg shows how intimacy with the realities of aging can actually be used as a means to liberation. When we become intimate with these inevitable aspects of life, he writes, we also become intimate with ourselves, with others, and with the world

Paperback,  192 pp,  $23.95. Buy now

How to Go on Living 
A practicing psychologist defines grief as the normal, expected, and healthy response to loss and provides a realistic appreciation for the pain, frustration, and difficult work required to overcome grief

Paperback,  338 pp,  $23.95. Buy now

Operating Instructions  by Anne Lamott
This is the journal of the birth of Anne Lamott’s son Sam, and their first year together. Coping with being a recovering alcoholic and a single mother, Anne had to face the fact that her best friend since childhood was dying of cancer

,  261 pp,  $42.00. Buy now

The Courage to Grieve  by Judy Tatelbaum
Although emphasizing the response to bereavement, this book aims to help with all kinds of loss and grief, exploring intense and uncomfortable emotions such as sorrow, guilt, loneliness, resentment, confusion, and the temporary loss of the will to live. The author is a Gestalt therapist in the USA

Paperback,  320 pp,  $27.95. Buy now

In the Midst of Winter  by Mary Moffat
This book is composed of selections from the ‘Literature of Mourning’. From Catullus to Camus, Shakespeare to Virgina Woolf, from Lady Ise to Adrienne Rich, great writers express the inexpressible

Paperback,  115 pp,  $23.95. Buy now