Dying and Grieving: Lifespan and Family Perspectives

Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: I'm afraid I'm only familiar with the first edition of the text, which I used in a course I lead on death, dying, and grieving. However, I imagine this second edition only improves on the first.

The book's insightful content is not only marvelous to see in a textbook, but the prose itself is well worth reading as well--from the first sentence of the first chapter: "A dying individual is a living individual." Both unusual standards for texts. Quite a labor of love.

Each chapter closes with a personal account related to the developmental or family perspective on which the chapter focusses; these, as the authors remarked, "say it all." Each chapter also includes recommended reading, both fiction and non-fiction, for people who would like to read more.

Rating:
Summary: honors the textbook form and writing in general
Review: includes personal accounts at the end of each chapter. Very touching. For people freshly in grief, I don't think a textbook of grief would be most interesting--might browse "In the Midst of Winter: Selections from the Literature of Morning," edited by Mary Jane Moffat.. But writing a textbook about death and grief, especially one as well written as this, I think responds to how textbooks can be sources of what's important to know in life.