The first edition of Life and Death Matters was a breakthrough text, centralizing the experiences of those on the front lines of environmental crises and forging new paradigms for understanding how crises emerge and how different groups of actors respond to them. This second edition, fully updated with both expanded and new chapters, once again provides a benchmark for the field and opens important pathways for further research. Authors reassess the state of scholarship and grassroots activism in a new century when social and environmental systems are being reconceptualised within post-9/11 security and biosecurity frameworks, when global warming and resource scarcity are not fears but realities, when global power and politics are being realigned, and when ecocide, ethnocide, and genocide are daily tragedies. This bold new edition of Life and Death Matters will be a widely used textbook and essential reading for students, scholars, and policy makers.

With the sensitivity born of time and experience, Charles Hoffacker presents an unusually warm and caring approach to preaching at a pivotal transition in human life, one which goes to the very heart of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Hoffacker teaches the reader, whether a seasoned preacher or a novice homilist, to find the key to unlocking the mystery of Jesus' promise of eternal life in a mortal life now ended.

Death Matters is a unusual new book that encourages us to change how we think about dying. Throughout the book, author Sally Petch asks us to start talking about and planning our own death – so that we can reach a place of acceptance and lessen our fear of an event which is, ultimately inevitable. Taking a gentle, questioning format, Death Matters encourages us to pause and think about different aspects of dying. Sally poses several questions, encouraging us to note down our responses and consider our thoughts and feelings in response to specific topics. Death Matters also shares other people’s thoughts, anecdotes and experiences to help us feel more comfortable with discussing death openly.There are few books on this topic, fewer still that deal with death in this direct manner – all of which make Death Matters essential reading for everyone who wishes to embrace death positively.By overcoming our fear of death, we will release ourselves to live a fuller live. By changing our emphasis to accept death, we can journey towards dying with confidence and equilibrium.

A collection of seminal articles investigating whether death is bad for us – and if so, whether immortality would be good for us.

This book responds to a growing interest in death, dying and the dead within and beyond the field of death studies. The collection defines an understanding of ‘difficult death’ and examines the differences between death, dying and the dead, as well as exploring the ethical challenges of researching death in mediated form. The collection is attendant to the ways in which difficult deaths are imbricated in power structures both before and after they become mediatised in culture. As such, the work navigates the many political and social complexities and inequalities – what might be deemed the difficulties – of death, dying and the dead. The book seeks to expand understandings of the difficulty of death in media and culture through a wide range of chapters from different contexts focused on literature, film, television, and in online environments, as well as several chapters examining news reportage of difficult deaths.

Matters of Death, the second volume of Matters of Life and Death, takes on a daunting subject, the realization of the inevitable end of life. "A Prelude in Sentences" previews the theme of the book in a series of aphorisms. "Death Interpreted", the first chapter, delves into archaeology and history to examine the meaningfulness of human death. The ultimate meaning is not that of the death of the body as a natural process, but the immortality of the soul as pronounced by philosophy and religion. "The Morbidity of Authors", the next chapter, is a byway on the character traits of the author, case studies of the morbidity and deaths of certain authors, and on to literary immortality in spite of it all. "Incidents of Death", the final chapter, contains further narratives of tragic situations in the life-and-death of fictional, but very real and human characters. Despite apprehension, Matters of Death concludes with the hope for life-satisfaction and fulfillment.

The forms by which a deceased person may be brought to rest are as many as there are causes of death. In most societies the disposal of the corpse is accompanied by some form of celebration or ritual which may range from a simple act of deportment in solitude to the engagement of large masses of people in laborious and creative festivities. In a funerary context the term ritual may be taken to represent a process that incorporates all the actions performed and thoughts expressed in connection with a dying and dead person, from the preparatory pre-death stages to the final deposition of the corpse and the post-mortem stages of grief and commemoration. The contributions presented here are focused not on the examination of different funerary practices, their function and meaning, but on the changes of such rituals – how and when they occurred and how they may be explained. Based on case studies from a range of geographical regions and from different prehistoric and historical periods, a range of key themes are examined concerning belief and ritual, body and deposition, place, performance and commemoration, exploring a complex web of practices.

A middle-aged widow, commuter of Amsterdam goes to Pakistan and weds a gentleman. Soon as the groom arrives into The Netherlands for a family reunion, he shockingly discovers in her a spoilt woman. The man tries to save his bond of marriage but the wronged woman neither wants to be tamed due to aspects of love, nor does she co-operate. Instead, she rather wants her man to close his eyes and to shut up his mouth if ever he wishes to become a legitimate resident in her country. The egoist man doesnt compromise on self-respect of a saintly husband and thus is thrown out into streets quite empty-handed and undocumented. Then he gets afraid of going back to his homeland predicting a social ridiculous. Years passed in such a dreary and stoned life-style that one day the city police arrests him against his unlawful status and surrenders him to the foreign police who when fails to deport, sets him free like a squeezed lemon after he having served a years custodial sentence. The author describes how a few Asian immigrants and their spoiled descendants who once get settled into the Western states . forget about their past of struggling. . trap and bait to their own continent/ country-fellows by showing on them a false fairyland. . and try to demoralize a Western society by using its culture as a shield or weapon to fulfill their own sensual curiosity which seems difficult to meet in their own sender lands. The author also regrets to inflexibility of the constitution and rejects to the old theory nobody is above law. He urges on the law-makers must to defend on humanitarian grounds to those noble outlanders who become illegal by some accident, or by a misfortune befell on them and not by fraud or cheating like do often the professional invaders or regular tress-passers breaking into some countrys barriers. The whole story convincingly draws a picture of human courage and endurance against all odds mixed in shadow of oppression and optimism by giving an entire message never quit. A compulsively true heart saga with a positive energy_ readable, thought-provoking and enjoyable.