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IN THE ARMS OF OTHERS

A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE RIGHT-TO-DIE IN AMERICA

A well-crafted history weaving together the complex legal, moral, political, psychological, and social issues surrounding the right-to-die movement in the US. Filene (author of Him/Her/Self, 1975, and the novel Home and Away, 1992), a professor of history at the University of North Carolina, focuses on the Karen Ann Quinlan case, which he calls an “earthquake” that “reshaped the cultural landscape.” He places this pivotal event in historical context, tracing the evolution of the concept of euthanasia from the 19th-century idea of the easy, natural death to that of mercy killing by a physician, and, in the midst of growing concern about medical technology’s ability to prolong the dying process, the emergence of a new concept, the right to die. Filene describes the right-to-die movement as a river fed by two dynamic social forces of the 1960s, the therapeutic human-potential movement and the equal-rights movement, and he shows how the notion of medical civil rights has fared in hospitals, courts, and legislatures in the last two decades. He analyzes the shifting attitudes toward assisted suicide and documents the advent of and growing interest in living wills, devices whose shortcomings he is careful to point out. Death, he notes, must be viewed in a cultural context, and he offers two contrasting ones: Bali, where the death of an individual is celebrated by the whole community, and the Netherlands, where a consensus has been reached that the individual has the right to a doctor’s help in dying. As a society, Filene says, we are moving toward acceptance of physician-assisted suicide, but death with dignity will remain elusive until health care is available for all and the comfort care of hospices is widespread—and until we understand that our much-valued autonomy depends on relatedness to others. Thoughtful study that brings needed clarity and perspective to a serious and controversial issue. (b&w illustrations, not seen)

Pub Date: June 5, 1998

ISBN: 1-56663-188-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Ivan Dee/Rowman & Littlefield

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

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