MAN'S CONCERN WITH DEATH

Seventeen short chapters divided into four sections make a contemporary appraisal of what death is or isn't, and because the contributors are top-rank scholars, these articles are as interesting for the personal attitudes they reveal as for the information they impart. Historian Toynbee, now an elderly man, writes the all-but-poignant epilogue and shares with the distinguished religious philosopher, Ninian Smart, the bulk of the chapters, devoted to short surveys of traditional religious and humanist attitudes toward death. The medical definition of death, now so critical to the performance of organ transplants, is covered by Keith Mant; a psychiatrist, John Hinton, makes a cogent plea for truthfulness between doctors and dying patients; a pediatrician, Simon Yudkin, a writer Eric Rhode, and the Oxford philosopher H. H. Price (former President of the Society for Psychical Research) all comment on various aspects of the emotionally powerful subject. Undoubtedly Rosalind Heywood's fascinating articles on ""discarnate"" existence will have widest popular appeal: she brings impressive scholarship to an exploration of psychic survival of corporeal existence. That she and Professor Price were invited to share in this volume is evidence of its open spirit. There's nothing morbid here; rather, vivid and honest speculation about our most mysterious, inevitable, experience.