A Homecoming To Death

When twenty-year-old Mike Holt, emotionally scarred and labeled an underachiever by his parents, accepts Uncle Edas invitation to return for a visit to Collinsville, Vermont, he little suspects how events ahead will dramatically change his life, or that one in particular will nearly end it. Mike is skeptical of Edas theory that a neighboras recent death was due to homicide engineered by the local ski area company in a scheme to acquire land; by the time he discovers the truth, another suspicious death has occurred. Collinsvilleas colorful characters include Mikeas anti-Iraq-war-demonstrating aunt, Prudy; his observant, stubble-faced fishing buddy, Alfred Talmage; old Miss Worthington, who seems to harbor a self-destructive secret; and a new hiking partner turned spiritual guide, Jim Byron. Surviving a final, harrowing experience, Mike grows in wisdom and emotional strength; like Aunt Prudy, he may even believe in miracles.

A teen girl’s rising star attracts the attention of a sinister figure in this chilling young adult thriller from Goosebumps author R.L. Stine. Tania is having the best year of her life. She has a hot new boyfriend, she landed the starring role in a student film, and she’s just been voted homecoming queen. But someone is jealous of Tania and plans to ruin her perfect year—even if that means killing her. Will Tania live to see the homecoming dance?

This volume sheds new light on the experience of ancient Greek warfare by identifying and examining three fundamental transitions undergone by the classical Athenian hoplite as a result of his military service: his departure to war, his homecoming from war having survived, and his homecoming from war having died. As a conscript, a man regularly called upon by his city-state to serve in the battle lines and perform his citizen duty, the most common military experience of the hoplite was one of transition – he was departing to or returning from war on a regular basis, especially during extended periods of conflict. Scholarship has focused primarily on the experience of the hoplite after his return, with a special emphasis on his susceptibility to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but the moments of transition themselves have yet to be explored in detail. Taking each in turn, Owen Rees examines the transitions from two sides: from within the domestic environment as a member of an oikos, and from within the military environment as a member of the army. This analysis presents a new template for each and effectively maps the experience of the hoplite as he moves between his domestic and military duties. This allows us to reconstruct the effects of war more fully and to identify moments with the potential for a traumatic impact on the individual.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD “A beautifully crafted memoir, rich with humor and wisdom.” —Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club “The idea of a cultured gay man leaving New York City to care for his aging mother in Paris, Missouri, is already funny, and George Hodgman reaps that humor with great charm. But then he plunges deep, examining the warm yet fraught relationship between mother and son with profound insight and understanding.” —Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself—an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook—in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can’t bring himself to force her from the home both treasure—the place where his father’s voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict: Betty, who speaks her mind but cannot quite reveal her heart, has never really accepted the fact that her son is gay. As these two unforgettable characters try to bring their different worlds together, Hodgman reveals the challenges of Betty’s life and his own struggle for self-respect, moving readers from their small town—crumbling but still colorful—to the star-studded corridors of Vanity Fair. Evocative of The End of Your Life Book Club and The Tender Bar, Hodgman’s New York Times bestselling debut is both an indelible portrait of a family and an exquisitely told tale of a prodigal son’s return.

The post-apartheid dispensation that has seen Black people continue to be hurled at the margins of existence has crystalised mental pathologies that have their roots in our violent and amoral past. Millions of Black people in South Africa are battling with a range of mental health challenges resulting from a complex interplay between biological, psychological, social and environmental factors. In Corridors of Death, the lived experiences of Black students in historically White universities is explored, exposing how structural violence, racism and a culture of alienation are pushing them to the edge of depression and increasingly, suicide. The book contends that urgent structural and institutional interventions need to be made, the centre of which must be transformation that reflects the demographic and socio-political construct of the South African society. Unless and until this happens, Black students will increasingly reach an unendurable level of invisible agony, and die in universities.

This book draws the philosophical contribution of Martin Heidegger together with theological-spiritual insights from the East, especially that of Nikolai Berdyaev. Thus, it brings into dialogue the West with the East, and philosophy with theology. By doing so, it offers Christian theology an existential-spiritual language that is relevant and meaningful for the contemporary reader. In particular, the work explores Heidegger’s ‘being towards death’ (Sein zum Tode) as the basis for theological-philosophical thinking. Only the one who embraces ‘being towards death’ has the courage to think and poetize. This thinking, in turn, makes ‘being towards death’ possible, and in this circular movement of thinking and being, the mystery of being reveals itself and yet remains hidden. Since the work aims at demonstrating ‘being towards death’ through language, it transitions away from the common formulations and traditionally accepted ways of writing (dogmatic) theology towards an original, philosophical reflection on faith and spirituality. At different points, however, the work also retrieves the profound thoughts and theologies of the past, the insightful creativity of which cannot be denied.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Death and the Migrant is a sociological account of transnational dying and care in British cities. It chronicles two decades of the ageing and dying of the UK's cohort of post-war migrants, as well as more recent arrivals. Chapters of oral history and close ethnographic observation, enriched by photographs, take the reader into the submerged worlds of end-of-life care in hospices, hospitals and homes. While honouring singular lives and storytelling, Death and the Migrant explores the social, economic and cultural landscapes that surround the migrant deathbed in the twenty-first century. Here, everyday challenges - the struggle to belong, relieve pain, love well, and maintain dignity and faith – provide a fresh perspective on concerns and debates about the vulnerability of the body, transnationalism, care and hospitality. Blending narrative accounts from dying people and care professionals with insights from philosophy and feminist and critical race scholars, Yasmin Gunaratnam shows how the care of vulnerable strangers tests the substance of a community. From a radical new interpretation of the history of the contemporary hospice movement and its 'total pain' approach, to the charting of the global care chain and the affective and sensual demands of intercultural care, Gunaratnam offers a unique perspective on how migration endows and replenishes national cultures and care. Far from being a marginal concern, Death and the Migrant shows that transnational dying is very much a predicament of our time, raising questions and concerns that are relevant to all of us.

This is the author's second novel, and like the first, also based on a true story. The first one titled, And the Sea Shall Hide Them, actually took place in history perhaps seventy years after the one you are about to read. This story centers around William Morgan, a Virginian living in Batavia, New York. He was a distant relative of the author. Morgan was of an impulsive nature, doing what he thought was the right thing to do. This eventually brought him in contention with the Masonic Order in Batavia, New York in 1826. His long and troublesome life eventually found him isolated on Utila Island in the Western Caribbean. He had been kidnapped! He was one of the first men to begin shipping bananas commercially to the United States, an enterprise that eventually grew into a vast business. Despite these good tidings, which included a loving wife and children, his life was a troubled one. However, his legacy to the small island of Utila was a noteworthy one, having a beneficial blessing on the early settlers of that island.

LISA 2002 Liverpool Interdisciplinary Symposium in Antiquity