A conversation about resistance...to life's experiences.If I had one afternoon to spend with my friend Lily, just diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, what would I say?I had been where she is now, yet against all the odds found the way to experience a complete and spontaneous healing. The secrets I was shown are the opposite of what society teaches us. This was not a miracle (as it may seem).Resistance: all the ways we avoid and fight with lif...

If you caught a glimpse of heaven, would you choose to come back to life? Investigative journalist Judy Bachrach has collected accounts of those who died and then returned to life with lucid, vivid memories of what occurred while they were dead, and the conclusions are astonishing. Clinical death—the moment when the heart stops beating and brain stem activity ceases—is not necessarily the end of consciousness, as a number of doctors are now beginning to concede. Hundreds of thousands of fa...

A beautifully written and darkly funny journey through the world of the allergic.Like twelve million other Americans, Sandra Beasley suffers from food allergies. Her allergies—severe and lifelong—include dairy, egg, soy, beef, shrimp, pine nuts, cucumbers, cantaloupe, honeydew, mango, macadamias, pistachios, cashews, swordfish, and mustard. Add to that mold, dust, grass and tree pollen, cigarette smoke, dogs, rabbits, horses, and wool, and it’s no wonder Sandra fel...

An authoritative, persuasive, and riveting call for the legalization and responsible use of medical marijuana, The Cannabis Manifesto is a book whose time has comeThe Cannabis Manifesto is both a call to action and a radical vision of humans' relationship with this healing but controversial plant. Steve DeAngelo, the founder of Harborside Health Center, the world's largest medical-cannabis dispensary, presents a compelling case for cannabis as a w...

A Polk Award winner for medical journalism examines how patients and families can regain control of the dying process: "A superb resource." — Kirkus ReviewsWith advances in medicine, technology, and daily diet and exercise practices, Americans are living longer than ever before. We have an unprecedented opportunity for meaningful closure—free of pain, among loved ones, with our affairs in order and spiritual calm attained. Instead, most of us discover that ...

America is quickly going grey. There are more Americans alive today over the age of 80 than ever before in our history; by 2030, that number is expected to almost triple. But when we discuss how long people live, we must also consider how well they live. Aging Our Way follows the everyday lives of 30 elders (ages 85-102) living at home and mostly alone to understand how they create and maintain meaningful lives for themselves. Through extensive interviews, Meika Loe explores how elders naviga...

This is a discussion of the transformation of drug use (especially morphine and cocaine, which was once commonly available in any chemist's shop) into a national menace. It revolves around the death of Billie Carleton, a West End musical actress, in 1918. Its cast of characters includes Brilliant Chang, a Chinese restaurant proprietor and Edgar Manning, a jazz drummer from Jamaica. They were eventually identified as the villains of the affair and invested with a highly charged sexual menac...

Medical advances prolong life. They also sometimes prolong suffering. Should we protect life or alleviate suffering? This dilemma formed the foundation for a powerful right-to-die movement and a counterbalancing concern over an emerging culture of death. What are the qualities of a life worth living? Where are the boundaries of tolerable suffering? This book is based on a hugely popular undergraduate course taught at the University of Texas, and is ideal for those interested in the social ...

New infections with HIV remain an urgent problem among young people in Africa, but many young Africans pursue sexual relationships with little thought about the epidemic. This book examines young people's sexual relationships in a region typical of rural sub-Saharan Africa and investigates why the risk of HIV infection generally was not a salient concern for them. It is based on an extraordinarily large and representative qualitative study that was affiliated with an adolescent se...

Patient organizations today play a major role in the scientific, economic and political arenas. They have become the quasi-obliged partners of researchers, industrialists and political authorities. This book investigates this quite recent configuration by offering an in-depth exploration of three thematic issues: To what social and political stakes are patient organizations confronted as regards the transformation, production, circulation, and governance of knowledge? The involvement of pa...

This volume offers new perspectives on questions which are highly relevant in the context of dementia and the arts and the humanities. The issues concern the personal identity of dementia patients, their familial relationships, advance directives and the patients’ autonomy, the cultural representation of the subjective experience of dementia, and the patients’ stigmatization due to the disease. By considering topics from philosophy and medical humanities, from cultural studies as well as f...

The issue of population ageing in East-Asia has been extensively studied but we remain in the dark as to the fate of the region’s growing dead population, particularly in the largest metropolitan areas where there is bitter competition for space among the various human activities. From private cemetery developers to undertakers, not to mention a vast array of sub-contractors, death is discreetly helping a multitude of industry players to prosper. The result has been the transformation of f...