"What do we know about immortality? We can be certain that the body does not survive death. Once the heart stops circulating blood, the brain is no longer nourished and begins to decay. On the basis of medical evidence it would seem that, within a quarter of an hour, the personality is irreparably destroyed and the individual ceases to exist. But now there is mounting scientific evidene for a life after death. This book is the product of extensive interviews of over 1,000 doctors and nurses who have been present when cases of 'postmortem existence' have occurred. Extensive computer analyses of their observations have been made. The results are reported in this first truly scientific investigation of the experiences of the dying at the hour of death. What these doctors and nurses have witnessed cannot be explained away by medical, psychological, cultural, or other conditioning. Yet it may answer the fundamental question of human existence -- is there life after death?"--back cover.

An “absolutely magnificent” book (The New Republic)—the fruit of almost two decades of study—that traces the changes in Western attitudes toward death and dying from the earliest Christian times to the present day. A truly landmark study, The Hour of Our Death reveals a pattern of gradually developing evolutionary stages in our perceptions of life in relation to death, each stage representing a virtual redefinition of human nature. Starting at the very foundations of Western culture, the eminent historian Phillipe Ariès shows how, from Graeco-Roman times through the first ten centuries of the Common Era, death was too common to be frightening; each life was quietly subordinated to the community, which paid its respects and then moved on. Ariès identifies the first major shift in attitude with the turn of the eleventh century when a sense of individuality began to rise and with it, profound consequences: death no longer meant merely the weakening of community, but rather the destruction of self. Hence the growing fear of the afterlife, new conceptions of the Last Judgment, and the first attempts (by Masses and other rituals) to guarantee a better life in the next world. In the 1500s attention shifted from the demise of the self to that of the loved one (as family supplants community), and by the nineteenth century death comes to be viewed as simply a staging post toward reunion in the hereafter. Finally, Ariès shows why death has become such an unendurable truth in our own century—how it has been nearly banished from our daily lives—and points out what may be done to “re-tame” this secret terror. The richness of Ariès's source material and investigative work is breathtaking. While exploring everything from churches, religious rituals, and graveyards (with their often macabre headstones and monuments), to wills and testaments, love letters, literature, paintings, diaries, town plans, crime and sanitation reports, and grave robbing complaints, Aries ranges across Europe to Russia on the one hand and to England and America on the other. As he sorts out the tangled mysteries of our accumulated terrors and beliefs, we come to understand the history—indeed the pathology—of our intellectual and psychological tensions in the face of death.

A moving exploration of families facing death, in the voices of those affected in one rural corner of Portugal.

This internationally acclaimed study that cites scientific evidence for life after death gets an update -- and reveals new proofWhat They Saw ... At the Hour of Death has garnered worldwide acclaim since its original publication in 1977. Now, as the recent success of the best-selling Embraced by the Light points to a continuing interest in the topic of life after death, the startling -- and comforting -- findings of researchers Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson are brought completely up to date.Based on a four-year study involving almost 50,000 terminally ill patients, observed by hundreds of physicians and nurses in the U.S. and India, the conclusions reached by Osis and Haraldsson are compelling and optimistic. In that first scientific investigation of the hour just before death, doctors found that the patients in India and the U.S. had startling experiences -- such as visions and elevated moods -- that were not due to their medical conditions, and that the basic experience was the same for both cultures. Universal feelings of serenity and peace and awareness of another reality indicate that perhaps death should not be so fe

AriA]s traces Western man's attitudes toward mortality from the early medieval conception of death as the familiar collective destiny of the human race to the modern tendency, so pronounced in industrial societies, to hide death as if it were an embarrassing family secret. -- Newsweek

A Sister Agatha and Father Selwyn MysteryAs Yuletide settles upon Gwenafwy Abbey, the Welsh convent's peace is shattered when Tiffany Reese, president of the Village Art Society, is found dead on the floor of the parish hall. Sister Agatha, whose interests lie more with reading and writing mysteries than with making the abbey's world-renowned organic gouda, begins her investigation. Tiffany's half-brother, Kendrick Geddings, emerges as the prime suspect as he and Tiffany had been locked in a vicious battle for control of the family estate. But if Sister Agatha thinks she has the case wrapped up, she'll have to think again.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The award-winning book that inspired an Apple Original series from Apple TV+ • A landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina—and the suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice—from a Pulitzer Prize–winning physician and reporter “An amazing tale, as inexorable as a Greek tragedy and as gripping as a whodunit.”—Dallas Morning News After Hurricane Katrina struck and power failed, amid rising floodwaters and heat, exhausted staff at Memorial Medical Center designated certain patients last for rescue. Months later, a doctor and two nurses were arrested and accused of injecting some of those patients with life-ending drugs. Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting by Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink, unspools the mystery, bringing us inside a hospital fighting for its life and into the most charged questions in health care: which patients should be prioritized, and can health care professionals ever be excused for hastening death? Transforming our understanding of human nature in crisis, Five Days at Memorial exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals how ill-prepared we are for large-scale disasters—and how we can do better. ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, Entertainment Weekly, Christian Science Monitor, Kansas City Star WINNER: National Book Critics Circle Award, J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Ridenhour Book Prize, American Medical Writers Association Medical Book Award, National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Award