Development Sociology

Preparing to Die is for anyone interested in learning how to prepare for death from a Buddhist perspective, both spiritually and practically. It is also for those who want to learn how to help someone else who is dying, both during the time of illness and death as well as after death.

The modern healthcare system has become proficient at staving off death with aggressive interventions. And yet, eventually everyone dies - and although most Americans say they would prefer to die peacefully at home, more than half of all deaths take place in hospitals or health care facilities. At the End of Life tackles this conundrum head on. Featuring 22 compelling personal-medical narratives, the collection explores death, dying, and palliative care, and highlights current features, flaws, and advances in the healthcare system.

Helping widows and widowers learn how to cope with the grief of losing their helpmate, their lover, and perhaps their financial provider, this guide reveals how to find continued meaning in life when doing so seems difficult. Bereaved spouses will find advice on when and how to dispose of their mate's belongings, dealing with their children, and redefining their role with friends and family.

In Talk, Harvard professor Alison Wood Brooks shows how simple changes in how we communicate can enhance our relationships, our performance at work and our lives; who we talk to affects our happiness; and how to talk across differences. Her original research, based on thousands of conversations from sales calls to speed dating, provides fascinating insights.

Based partly on the author's experience, partly on her in-depth interviews, and partly on a questionnaire she developed with psychologist Holly Barrett to which almost 600 women responded, Father Loss provides the clearest portrait yet of a very special group of women. As a group, they express their insecurities ("Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be able to love a man totally...because that would mean I didn't love my father anymore." - Leslie).

From the author of the New York Times and international best seller Unfu*k Yourself, Gary John Bishop presents a no-holds-barred guide to breaking through our cycles of self-sabotage to get what we want out of life. In Unfu*k Yourself, Gary John Bishop told us it was time to stop making excuses - to recognise and take responsibility for the negative self-talk holding us back. In Stop Doing That Sh*t, he builds on that message, teaching us how to stop self-sabotaging behaviour. Bishop explains how our destructive cycles come down to the way we’re wired.

Bittersweetness recognises that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired. As Bittersweet shows, our obsession with happiness is not making us happy, healthy or whole. It's only by embracing our darker emotions—as well as the light—that we discover our deepest meaning and connection, love and joy. It can change the way we work, the way we create and the way we love—for it is the hidden source of our love stories, moonshots and masterpieces.

What if we didn’t consider death the worst possible outcome? What if we discussed it honestly, embraced end-of-life care and prepared for the end of our lives with hope and acceptance? In this empathetic and knowledgeable guide, TikTok star Julie McFadden – known online as ‘Hospice Nurse Julie’ – shares the valuable lessons she’s learned in her fifteen years as a palliative care nurse.

Written after his wife's tragic death as a way of surviving the "mad midnight moments", A Grief Observed is C.S. Lewis's honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the midst of loss. This work contains his concise, genuine reflections on that period.

In this sensitive and lucid account, Pauline Boss explains that, all too often, those confronted with ambiguous loss fluctuate between hope and hopelessness. Suffered too long, these emotions can deaden feeling and make it impossible for people to move on with their lives. Yet the central message of this book is that they can move on. Drawing on her research and clinical experience, Boss suggests strategies that can cushion the pain and help families come to terms with their grief.

From the National Book Award–winning author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression comes a monumental new work, a decade in the writing, about family. In Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon tells the stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children but also find profound meaning in doing so. Solomon’s startling proposition is that diversity is what unites us all.

In prospective, long-term research with over 700 couples, Gottman has discovered certain factors that distinguish happy, stable couples from both unstable, ultimately divorcing couples and stable but unhappy couples. These findings, which are explained here in understandable, nontechnical language, form the basis of his Sound Marital House theory of marriage, which guides the new therapy. This therapy has two goals: changing the marital friendship and teaching couples to regulate conflict.

Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross created her classic seminal work, On Death and Dying, to offer us a new perspective on the terminally ill. It is not a psychoanalytic study, nor is it a "how-to" manual for managing death. Rather, it refocuses on the patient as a human being and a teacher, in the hope that we will learn from him or her about the final stages of life.

Patpong, in the heart of Bangkok, teems with bars and sex shows, catering mainly to farangs - foreigners. Cleo Odzer, a young anthropologist, spent three years studying the area. Gaining the confidence of the bar girls and bar boys, she interviewed them at length, lived among them, accompanied several back to their families in remote villages. She also got to know their customers, those in for a night or in forever (many fell in love and stayed on in Patpong). From Odzer's account emerges a far different picture from the cliched image of the prostitute.

Working women today are better educated and more well qualified than ever before. Yet men still predominate in the corporate world. In The Confidence Code, Claire Shipman and Katty Kay argue that the key reason is confidence. Combining cutting-edge research in genetics, gender, behavior, and cognition - with examples from their own lives and those of other successful women in politics, media, and business - Kay and Shipman go beyond admonishing women to “lean in.”

Die Wise does not offer seven steps for coping with death. It does not suggest ways to make dying easier. It pours no honey to make the medicine go down. Instead, with lyrical prose, deep wisdom, and stories from his two decades of working with dying people and their families, Stephen Jenkinson places death at the center of the discussion and asks us to behold it in all its painful beauty. Die Wise teaches the skills of dying, skills that have to be learned in the course of living deeply and well.

The first book that explains how to open to the immensity of living with death—and how participating fully in life is the perfect preparation for whatever may come next. In Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying, the Levines provide calm compassion rather than the frightening melodrama of death. A meaningful insight how to participate fully in life as the perfect preparation for whatever may come next, be it sorrow or joy, loss or gain, death or a new wonderment at life.

In our increasingly polarised society, having productive discussions about social justice issues has never been more challenging, or more crucial. From the persistent ('not all men,' 'I don't see colour') to the insidious ('to play devil's advocate...', 'climate change is coming'), too often, antagonistic or problematic responses threaten to distract and derail our most urgent conversations. Tackling twenty of the most enduring conversation-stoppers, No Offence, But... equips listeners with the knowledge, tools and context to respond with confidence.

What is the secret of happy relationships? How do companies build collaborative cultures? What lies behind some of the greatest scientific and creative breakthroughs? The surprising answer is: conflict. Whether it's at work, at home or in public, confronting our differences is the only way to make the most out of them. How to Disagree is about how to do that successfully.

When first published in 2001, it divided female critics and readers. One famous columnist wrote a piece demanding that Cusk's children were taken into care, that was she was unfit to look after them. Oprah Winfrey invited her on the show to defend herself and the book as protests grew about its honest, gritty account of the misery of those early months. It is a seminal, stand-out book on the complications of being an ambivalent mum in an age of white-washed, Annabel Karmel'd new families.