President Barack Obama’s mother, S. Ann Dunham, was an economic anthropologist and rural development consultant who worked in several countries including Indonesia. Dunham received her doctorate in 1992. She died in 1995, at the age of 52, before having the opportunity to revise her dissertation for publication, as she had planned. Dunham’s dissertation adviser Alice G. Dewey and her fellow graduate student Nancy I. Cooper undertook the revisions at the request of Dunham’s daughter, Maya S...

For healthcare providers, few responsibilities are as challenging-or as meaningful-as guiding patients and families through the end of life. Through the voices of clinicians, chaplains, social workers, and ethicists, Closing the Circle illuminates the essential skills that shape a "good death": honest communication, compassionate truth-telling, family engagement, cultural sensitivity, ethical awareness, and the transformative power of advance directives. Each chapter blends real s...

Becoming a widow is one of the most traumatic life events that a woman can experience. Yet, as this remarkable new collection reveals, each woman responds to that trauma differently. Here, forty-three widows tell their stories, in their own words.Some were widowed young, while others were married for decades. Some cared for their late partners through long terminal illnesses, while others lost their partners suddenly. Some had male partners, while others had female partners. Yet ea...