It happens in an instant. On a stormy December night, two cars collide head-on, and four people's lives are forever shattered.—In the aftermath of the accident that took the life of her husband of twenty-one years, Lainey Williams is a widow with conflicting feelings of loss, guilt and regret over a union that was far from ideal. After Lainey failed to give him a son, Don turned from his wife, seeking comfort in alcohol. The night of the accident, Don was at the wheel, and drunk. He never even saw the other car coming. The horrific crash that sent his wife, Marva, into a coma has forced Nathan Sullivan to reassess his life. When their daughter went off to college, he realized how little he and Marva had left in common. What was missing most was the love. It begins as two grieving people offering each other comfort and friendship. Trust grows, along with mutual passion. But just as Lainey and Nathan are starting to rebuild their lives—both separately and together—Lainey uncovers a shocking secret about Don. And Nathan is confronted with the most agonizing decision of his life that will put his relationship with Lainey to the ultimate test.—

Although philosophy, religion, and civic cultures used to help people prepare for aging and dying well, this is no longer the case. Today, aging is frequently seen as a problem to be solved and death as a harsh reality to be masked. In part, our cultural confusion is rooted in an inadequate conception of the human person, which is based on a notion of absolute individual autonomy that cannot but fail in the face of the dependency that comes with aging and decline at the end of life. To help correct the ethical impoverishment at the root of our contemporary social confusion, The Evening of Life provides an interdisciplinary examination of the challenges of aging and dying well. It calls for a re-envisioning of cultural concepts, practices, and virtues that embraces decline, dependency, and finitude rather than stigmatizes them. Bringing together the work of sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, theologians, and medical practitioners, this collection of essays develops an interrelated set of conceptual tools to discuss the current challenges posed to aging and dying well, such as flourishing, temporality, narrative, and friendship. Above all, it proposes a positive understanding of thriving in old age that is rooted in our shared vulnerability as human beings. It also suggests how some of these tools and concepts can be deployed to create a medical system that better responds to our contemporary needs. The Evening of Life will interest bioethicists, medical practitioners, clinicians, and others involved in the care of the aging and dying. Contributors: Joseph E. Davis, Sharon R. Kaufman, Paul Scherz, Wilfred M. McClay, Kevin Aho, Charles Guignon, Bryan S. Turner, Janelle S. Taylor, Sarah L. Szanton, Janiece Taylor, and Justin Mutter

From one of Italy’s greatest writers, a stunning novel “filled with shimmering, risky, darting observation” (Colm Tóibín) After WWII, a small Italian town struggles to emerge from under the thumb of Fascism. With wit, tenderness, and irony, Elsa, the novel’s narrator, weaves a rich tapestry of provincial Italian life: two generations of neighbors and relatives, their gossip and shattered dreams, their heartbreaks and struggles to find happiness. Elsa wants to imagine a future for herself, free from the expectations and burdens of her town’s history, but the weight of the past will always prove unbearable, insistently posing the question: “Why has everything been ruined?”

Homoeopathy today has developed a beautiful orchid which is disseminating its sweets fragrance and freshness to the whole of world by healing all living beings in a rapid, gentle and permanent way.

This book reviews the challenges that face American newspapers at the end of the 1980s, after a decade of circulation losses for many dailies and several decades of accelerating social change. It describes how content of newspapers is changing in the context of a discussion of the nature of news.