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How do our ideas about dying influence the way we live? Life has often been envisioned as a journey, the river of time carrying us inexorably toward the unknown country—and in our day we increasingly turn to myth and magic, ritual and virtual reality, cloning and cryostasis in the hope of eluding the reality of the inevitable end. In this book a preeminent and eminently wise writer on death and dying proposes a new way of understanding our last transition. A fresh exploration of the final passage through life and perhaps through death, his work deftly interweaves historical and contemporary experiences and reflections to demonstrate that we are always on our way. Drawing on a remarkable range of observations—from psychology, anthropology, religion, biology, and personal experience—Robert Kastenbaum re-envisions life's forward-looking progress, from early-childhood bedtime rituals to the many small rehearsals we stage for our final separation. Along the way he illuminates such moments and ideas as becoming a "corpsed person," going down to earth or up in flames, respecting or abusing (and eating) the dead, coping with "too many dead," conceiving and achieving a "good death," undertaking the journey of the dead, and learning to live through the scrimmage of daily life fully knowing that Eternity does not really come in a designer flask. Profound, insightful, often moving, this look at death as many cultures await it or approach it enriches our understanding of life as a never-ending passage

Covering all aspects of death and dying -- biological, medical, social, sociological, psychological, religious, and philosophical -- the 2-vol. Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying also provides a deep historical and cross-cultural perspective through the ages

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- 1 As We Think about Death -- A History of Death -- Not Thinking about Death: A Failed Experiment -- Your Self-Inventory of Attitudes, Beliefs, and Feelings -- Some Answers-and the Questions They RaiseM -- Man is Mortal: But What Does That Have to Do with Me? -- Anxiety, Denial, and Acceptance: Three Core Concepts -- Studies and Theories of Death Anxiety -- Major Findings From Self-Reports of Death Anxiety -- Theoretical Perspectives on Death Anxiety -- Accepting and Denying Death -- Summary -- Glossary -- For Further Thought... -- References -- 2 What is Death? What Does Death Mean? -- Ideas About the Nature and Meaning of Death -- Death as Observed, Proclaimed, and Imagined -- Biomedical Approaches to the Definition of Death -- Event Versus State -- Interpretations of the Death State -- Conditions That Resemble Death -- Death as a Person -- Conditions That Death Resembles -- The Undead -- Death as an Agent of Personal, Political, and Social Change -- Summary -- Glossary -- For Further Thought... -- References -- 3 Denial or Adaptation: the Death System -- A World Without Death -- Basic Characteristics of the Death System -- Components of the Death System -- Functions of the Death System -- Disasters and the Death System -- How our Death System Has Been Changing-and the "Deathniks" Who are Making a Difference -- Causes of Death: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow -- Basic Terms and Concepts -- Summary -- Glossary -- For Further Thought... -- References -- 4 Dying: Transition from Life -- "Dying": Primped and Medicalized -- The Moment of Death: Is it Vanishing? -- What Is Dying, and When Does it Begin? -- Trajectories of Dying: From Beginning to End -- Guarded Feelings, Subtle Communications -- Individuality and Universality in the Experience of Dying