Death, Everyone's Heritage

By Elaine Landau

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671328077
• ISBN13: 9780671328078
• Release Date: January 1976
• Publisher: Julian Messner
• Length: 127 Pages
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 and higher

Customer Reviews

A very controversial book

"Death Everyone's Heritage" is a very controversial book where the author discuss many interesting point related to death. The author started his book with a simple question what is death? We could try to define absolute death technically as the end of all cell activity. But such definition of total body death would be impractical. If it... In this book the author talk about death in many aspects. First, the author discusses the medical life-support where machine and medication can keep the patient with hopelessly damaged brain for long periods of time with respirators that keep their hearts and lungs pumping, sometimes autopsies have revealed that the patients' brain had even liquefied. The author question is if is fine for the patient being kept alive or prolong the process of his death - even hide the fact that the patient is already dead. The crucial question is when a person is considered medically and legally dead? The next idea addressed by the author in this book is euthanasia another very controversial subject. When illustrating he points the author give to us, some real history. Family member submit their loved to euthanasia. In most of the case the patient's family take this decision when the patient is terminally ill, is in extreme pain or in a vegetative state that mean surviving only because they are plugged to life-sustaining equipment. Although euthanasia is technically against the law, many people do not view it as a crime. This may account for the large number of people brought to trial for mercy killing who are acquitted. The next point the author discuss is when the individual is facing the death and what a dying person experiences during the process of dying. According to the author they will usually feel a mixture of fear, sorrow, anger, despair, resentment, and resignation. And the normal pattern of adjustment to dying involves several phases: a period of denial, a time of anger and Rage and then a time of final acceptance. Very well and mention many examples and describe many case about terminally ill patient. How the family behavior and how they fell, the cost of extensive care, how the patients deal with their emotion and anxiety, and how the patient's family cope with losing a loved on. Suicide is another topic where the author again bring to us many interesting cases and talk about suicide in different stage of life, circumstance, and why people have committed suicide. Funeral and cemetery, in those topic the author talked about he custom and style, funeral transaction, arrangements, funeral details, cemetery, land's price. "Death Everyone's Heritage", as mentioned at the beginning, is a very controversial book because of its contents, and the way the author support each topic using for each one many resource such as statistics, testimonies and research. In certain topics we can find special request form, as an example of living will. The organization of the book was pretty well organized and illu