Product Description

We will all die. Yet modern culture fears and avoids the subject of death. This book deals sensitively with a universal experience. Studs Terkel explores the ultimate human experience, that of death and the possibility of life afterward. Death is the one experience we all share but cannot know. In "Will the Circle be Unbroken?", a wide range of people address the final experience and its impact on the present in which we live. As well as the elderly and the sick, Terkel uses his talent to draw on the experiences of those who work closely with the dying - paramedics, police, fire-fighters, doctors and the recently bereaved. In talking about the ultimate and unknowable culmination in our lives, these people give voice to their deepest beliefs and hopes, reflecting on the lives they have led and what still lies before them. The result is a universal and moving account of death and religion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #182936 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Review
Thirty years ago Gore Vidal suggested to Studs Terkel that death would be a good subject for oral history; it's a subject which, after all, nobody can talk about with any genuine authority. Will the Circle be Unbroken is the result - Terkel has compiled the views and experiences of 63 death professionals (doctors, nurses, soldiers, detectives, murderers) and death amateurs (all of us, death professionals included). For all the variety of life-experience that it contains, the book is reassuringly repetitive; we all fear much the same thing and cope with it in much the same way. A poignant contribution to the neglected literature of death that is also, of course, a handbook to living well, a guide to making the most of death's long prelude.

Time Out
‘This is a rich and rewarding seam of oral history’

Publishing News
'A poignant contribution to the neglected literature of death that is also, of course, a handbook to living well'

Customer Reviews

really good book
This is my favourite book at the moment. It's so good! It's a collection of short, sharp oral histories from a variety of people. This includes doctors, nurses, fireman, priests, rabbis, people on death row, mothers, war heroes and ex gang members. What they share is their experiences with death and their attitudes towards it. It's very easy to read as it contains so many different styles. Collectively it's a book about ideas on the meaning of life and what is and should be important to people. Buy it!