Swimming in a Sea of Death

Swimming in a Sea of Death PDF

Author: David Rieff

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2008-01-08

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1416554289

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Both a memoir and an investigation, Swimming in a Sea of Death is David Rieff's loving tribute to his mother, the writer Susan Sontag, and her final battle with cancer. Rieff's brave, passionate, and unsparing witness of the last nine months of her life, from her initial diagnosis to her death, is both an intensely personal portrait of the relationship between a mother and a son, and a reflection on what it is like to try to help someone gravely ill in her fight to go on living and, when the time comes, to die with dignity. Rieff offers no easy answers. Instead, his intensely personal book is a meditation on what it means to confront death in our culture. In his most profound work, this brilliant writer confronts the blunt feelings of the survivor -- the guilt, the self-questioning, the sense of not having done enough. And he tries to understand what it means to desire so desperately, as his mother did to the end of her life, to try almost anything in order to go on living. Drawing on his mother's heroic struggle, paying tribute to her doctors' ingenuity and faithfulness, and determined to tell what happened to them all, Swimming in a Sea of Death subtly draws wider lessons that will be of value to others when they find themselves in the same situation.

Swimming in a Sea of Death

Swimming in a Sea of Death PDF

Author: David Rieff

Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 052285544X

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Swimming in a Sea of Death is David Rieff's loving tribute to his mother, the writer Susan Sontag, and her final battle with cancer. Rieff's brave, passionate and unsparing witness of the last nine months of her life is both an intensely personal portrait of the relationship between a mother and a son, and a reflection on what it means to confront death in our culture. David Rieff confronts his feelings in relation to his motherandmdash;the guilt, the self-questioning, the sense of not having done enough. And he tries to understand what it means to desire so desperately, as his mother did to the end of her life, and to try almost anything in order to go on living.

Swimmer in the Secret Sea

Swimmer in the Secret Sea PDF

Author: William Kotzwinkle

Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 97

ISBN-13: 1567923569

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"An immediate classic when first published in Redbook in 1975, Swimmer in the Secret Sea went on to be included in Prize Stories 1975: The O. Henry Awards and then published separately as a paperback. We are proud to restore to print this popular and critically acclaimed novella about Laski and Diane, a sculptor and his wife, and their struggle to bring a new life into the world, set against the backdrop of a cold Maine winter. Author William Kotzwinkle, well-known for his many enduring children's books such as Trouble in Bugland and his novelization of the movie E.T. The Extraterrestrial, is equally adept at writing seriously and poetically about life in extremis. This story of a father-to-be and his painful love for his wife and stillborn son will stay with readers for a lifetime."--Publisher's website.

Dead in the Water

Dead in the Water PDF

Author: Nancy Holder

Publisher: Delta

Published: 2011-07-13

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 0307796981

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From Bram Stoker Award–winning author Nancy Holder comes a chilling novel of horror on the sea. This is how it will be when you drown. . . . At a sun-washed dock in Long Beach, California, the creaky freighter, Morris, loaded with brightly colored boxcars, takes on passengers. Among the vacationers: a disgruntled yuppie couple, a child stricken by cancer, a woman searching for her lost husband, and a female cop packing a .38 and bitter memories of a boy who drowned before her eyes. In seas of love and blood they will drown, one at a time. And for their company, they will have those who have drowned before them—and those who have received a message in a bottle. . . . Praise for Dead in the Water “Dead in the Water is saturated with brooding, claustrophobic, hallucinatory menace. Nancy Holder’s vivid voice and sharp characterization make it all real. I’m never going on a boat again!”—Poppy Z. Brite “Dead in the Water is an involving and truly frightening book. This is the kind of horror that gets underneath your skin and works its way into your soul. Real terror . . . for those daring enough to take the trip. I enjoyed it immensely.”—Rick Hautala “Nancy Holder proves why she’s an award-winning author. Eerie—effective—excellent! A chilling combination of Lifeboat, Ship of Fools, and John Carpenter’s The Fog, Dead in the Water keeps you treading water with every page, gasping for breath, sucking you under. A nightmare cruise into black waters and terrifying depths.”—Lisa Cantrell “I’d feel safer in the water with Jaws.”—Brian Lumley “A nasty tale well told, infused with the eerily surreal quality of fevered nightmares. Discovering Nancy Holder is like finding a vein of true horror gold.”—Cheri Scotch “Man the lifeboats. Don your life jacket. Nancy Holder takes you on a cruise you won’t soon forget. Scary stuff.”—Maxine O’Callaghan “I couldn’t put it down! A whale of a tale. A page-turner—the first sentence will hook you and what follows will reel you in. Dead in the Water is fast-paced and exciting, mysterious and spooky!”—Chris Curry “Nancy Holder enshrouds fascinating characters within a chilling atmosphere and creates a relentless tale of terror at sea. Holder is one of my favorite writers.”—Elizabeth Massie

Swimming Lessons

Swimming Lessons PDF

Author: Penelope Niven

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9780156027076

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The author uses metaphors, such as floating, treading water, and swimming with all your might to share her insight on how to live life.

Swimming with the Dead

Swimming with the Dead PDF

Author: Kathy Brandt

Publisher: Signet

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780451210203

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This first title in a new series introduces Hannah Sampson, head of Denver homicide's Dive and Recovery Team. Hannah heads to the British Virgin Islands when the police commissioner's son, an expert diver, is found dead. Original.

Haunts of the Black Masseur

Haunts of the Black Masseur PDF

Author: Charles Sprawson

Publisher: Pantheon

Published: 2012-08-29

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0307823644

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In a masterful work of cultural history, Charles Sprawson, himself an obsessional swimmer and fluent diver, explores the meaning that different cultures have attached to water, and the search for the springs of classical antiquity. In nineteenth-century England bathing was thought to be an instrument of social and moral reform, while in Germany and America swimming came to signify escape. For the Japanese the swimmer became an expression of samurai pride and nationalism. Sprawson gives is fascinating glimpses of the great swimming heroes: Byron leaping dramatically into the surf at Shelley’s beach funeral; Rupert Brooke swimming naked with Virginia Woolf, the dark water “smelling of mint and mud”; Hart Crane swallow-diving to his death in the Bay of Mexico; Edgar Allan Poe’s lone and mysterious river-swims; Leander, Webb, Weissmuller, and a host of others. Informed by the literature of Swinburne, Goethe, Scott Fitzgerald, and Yukio Mishima; the films of Riefenstahl and Vigo; the Hollywood “swimming musicals” of the 1930s; and delving in and out of Olympic history, Haunts of the Black Masseur is an enthralling assessment of man—body submerged, self-absorbed. It is quite simply the best celebration of swimming ever written, even as it explores aspects of culture in a heretofore unimagined way.

Remember Death

Remember Death PDF

Author: Matthew McCullough

Publisher: Crossway

Published: 2018-08-08

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1433560569

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Life-expectancy worldwide is twice what it was a hundred years ago. And because of modern medicine, many of us don't often see death up close. That makes it easy to live as if death is someone else's problem. It isn't. Ignoring the certainty of death doesn't protect us from feeling its effects throughout the lives we're living now. But this avoidance can hold us back from experiencing the powerful, everyday relevance of Jesus's promises to us. So long as death remains remote and unreal, Jesus's promises will too. But honesty about death brings hope to life. That's the ironic claim at the heart of this book. Cultivating "death-awareness" helps us bring the promises of Jesus from the hazy clouds of some other world into the everyday problems of our world—where they belong.

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes PDF

Author: Dan Egan

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2017-03-07

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0393246442

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New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award "Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.… Egan’s book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.

Living in Death’s Shadow

Living in Death’s Shadow PDF

Author: Emily K. Abel

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2017-02-28

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1421421844

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Challenging assumptions about caregiving for those dying of chronic illness. What is it like to live with—and love—someone whose death, while delayed, is nevertheless foretold? In Living in Death’s Shadow, Emily K. Abel, an expert on the history of death and dying, examines memoirs written between 1965 and 2014 by family members of people who died from chronic disease. In earlier eras, death generally occurred quickly from acute illnesses, but as chronic disease became the major cause of mortality, many people continued to live with terminal diagnoses for months and even years. Illuminating the excruciatingly painful experience of coping with a family member’s extended fatal illness, Abel analyzes the political, personal, cultural, and medical dimensions of these struggles. The book focuses on three significant developments that transformed the experiences of those dying and their intimates: the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, the growing use of high-tech treatments at the end of life, and the rise of a movement to humanize the care of dying people. It questions the exalted value placed on acceptance of mortality as well as the notion that it is always better to die at home than in an institution. Ultimately, Living in Death’s Shadow emphasizes the need to shift attention from the drama of death to the entire course of a serious chronic disease. The chapters follow a common narrative of life-threatening disease: learning the diagnosis; deciding whether to enroll in a clinical trial; acknowledging or struggling against the limits of medicine; receiving care at home and in a hospital or nursing home; and obtaining palliative and hospice care. Living in Death’s Shadow is essential reading for everyone seeking to understand what it means to live with someone suffering from a chronic, fatal condition, including cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, and heart disease.