Practical and inspiring, DEATH & DYING, LIFE & LIVING, 8th Edition helps students learn how to navigate encounters with death, dying, and bereavement. The authors integrate classical and contemporary material, present task-based approaches for individual and family coping, and include four chapters devoted to death-related issues faced by children, adolescents, young and middle-aged adults, and older adults. They also discuss a variety of cultural and religious perspectives that affect people's understanding and practices associated with such encounters. Practical guidelines for constructive communication encourage productive living in the face of death. This book can be used as a primary textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses in death, dying, and bereavement; as a supplementary text in related courses; or as a general resource in the field.

Part I: LEARNING ABOUT DEATH, DYING AND BEREAVEMENT.
1. Education about Death, Dying, and Bereavement.
Part II: DEATH.
2. Changing Encounters with Death.
3. Changing Attitudes toward Death.
4. Death-Related Practices and the American Death System.
5. Cultural Patterns and Death.
Part III: DYING.
6. Coping with Dying.
7. Coping with Dying: How Individuals Can Help.
8. Coping with Dying: How Communities Can Help.
Part IV: BEREAVEMENT
9. Coping with Loss and Grief.
10. Coping with Loss and Grief: How Individuals Can Help.
11. Coping with Loss and Grief: Funeral Practices and Other Ways Communities Can Help.
PART V: DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVES.
12. Children.
13. Adolescents.
14. Young and Middle-Aged Adults.
15. Older Adults.
Part VI: LEGAL, CONCEPTUAL, AND MORAL ISSUES.
16. Legal Issues.
17. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior.
18. Aided Death: Assisted Suicide, Euthanasia, and Aid in Dying.
19. The Meaning and Place of Death in Life.
Part VII: AN EXAMPLE OF A SPECIFIC DISEASE ENTITY.
20. Illustrating the Themes of This Book: Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders.
Epilogue: Calendar Date Gives Mom Reason to Contemplate Life.
Appendix A. Selected Literature for Children: Annotated Descriptions.
Appendix B. Selected Literature for Adolescents: Annotated Descriptions.
Appendix C. Activity Books and Memory Books for Young Readers: Annotated Descriptions.

Practical and inspiring, DEATH & DYING, LIFE & LIVING, 8th Edition helps students learn how to navigate encounters with death, dying, and bereavement. The authors integrate classical and contemporary material, present task-based approaches for individual and family coping, and include four chapters devoted to death-related issues faced by children, adolescents, young and middle-aged adults, and older adults. They also discuss a variety of cultural and religious perspectives that affect people's understanding and practices associated with such encounters. Practical guidelines for constructive communication encourage productive living in the face of death. This book can be used as a primary textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses in death, dying, and bereavement; as a supplementary text in related courses; or as a general resource in the field. Kenneth J. Doka, who introduced the groundbreaking concepts of disenfranchised grief and adaptive grieving styles, joins the author team. This edition incorporates his schema of new understandings of bereavement, grief, and mourning. The book's consistent structure frames a variety of themes and topics: the components of death-related experiences (encounters, attitudes, and practices); gender, racial, and cultural influences; death systems in our society and different parts of the world; efforts to cope with dying and bereavement and ways to help people cope; developmental influences on death-related experiences; lessons about life and living that can be learned from the study of death, dying, and bereavement; and appreciation of moral, ethical, and spiritual values related to death, dying, and bereavement. Four chapters present developmental perspectives, offering detailed accounts of death-related issues faced by children, adolescents, young and middle-aged adults, and older adults -- more than any other comparable book in the field. These chapters are supported by three Appendices containing annotated descriptions of over 250 death-related books for children and adolescents. The authors use a task-based approach to explain how individuals and communities can cope with life-threatening illness and dying, loss and grief, and funeral and memorial rituals -- and as bereaved children, adolescents, or adults of different ages. An emphasis on cultural patterns within American society recognizes distinctive modes of death-related encounters, attitudes, and practices typically found in Americans of Hispanic, African, Asian or Pacific Island, and American-Indian or Alaskan Native backgrounds, as well as other examples of diversity in our society. A practical orientation highlights helping with death-related experiences -- helping others; helping oneself; and helping through families, social groups, institutions, and communities. Broad, practical coverage of death-related issues balances data-heavy analyses with inspirational prose and coping strategies. The authors approach controversial topics that are often not covered in other books, such as assisted suicide, euthanasia, and aid in dying; and organ and tissue donation. Personal Insights boxes offer unique points of view, including: a chaplain's reflection on differences between his role and that of a pastor; Auden on grief; a poem reflecting on the so-called "five stages of grief"; a bill of rights composed by grieving teens; a wife whose cervical fusion was based on donated bone from her deceased husband; a person with a progressive paralysis who compares her situation to that of the wounded man in the Good Samaritan parable; advice from two women who have lived with a spouse who died from different dementias; and numerous accounts of personal bereavement. Focus On boxes explore specific topics or provide resources for further exploration; for instance, HIV/AIDS; how death systems responded to natural disasters; what children's books can teach us about cultural differences, pet loss, suicide, Buddhist perspectives, and individuals affected by Alzheimer's disease; the bereavement of service dog owners; typical cost items for funeral services; funeral and bereavement resources; Sudden Infant Death Syndrome; practical ways to help suicidal persons; and how Robin Williams and Glen Campbell responded differently to their dementia diagnoses.