what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Who’s Afraid of Dying?

I last addressed this issue some 5 years ago with an annotated post of 21 books which started with Jessica Mitford’s book of 1963 which she updated some 30 years later The American Way of Death Revisited. The second book was On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross(1969) which detailed the famous five stages of grief -

  • denial
  • anger
  • bargaining
  • depression
  • acceptance

Since then, I’ve found 10 more which deal with old age and the prospect of dying

Stay of Execution – a sort of memoir Stewart Alsop (1973) just 75 pages
The Human Encounter with Death Stanislav Grof and Joan Halifax (1978) 258pp
The Hour of our Death Philippe Aries (1981) 900pp
Wrestling with the Angel – a memoir of my triumph over illness Max Lerner (1990) 200pp
Intoxicated by my Illness and other writings on life and death Anatole Broyard (1992) An amazing 
little book (only 82 pages) from a book reviewer who was diagnosed with late-stage prostate 
cancer

The 100 year life – living and working in an age of longevity L Gratton and A Scott (2016) 327pp

Old Age – a beginner’s guide Michael Kinsley (2016) 83pp

The New Long Life – a framework for flourishing in a changing world A Scott and L Gratton (2020)
186pp
The Lost Art of Dying  LS Dugdale (2021) 185pp

Age Proof – the new science of living a longer and healthier life Rose Kenny (2022) 299pp

The one thing I take from this post is the need to give a higher profile to my blog and the riches it offers – whether it’s

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