This is an important manual for those professionally involved with the dying, as well as a treatment & consolation for private readers. It brings together medical and humanities experts, to reflect on medical, cultural and religious responses to death.

"Prepared under the auspices of the Program for Humanities in Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine and the Goethe-Institut, Boston."

Attending to dying : limitations of medical technology (a resident's perspective) / Eric L. Krakauer -- Before their time : a clinicians's reflections on death and AIDS / Peter A. Selwyn -- The doctor's role in death / Sherwin B. Nuland -- Thoughts on euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide / Alan B. Astrow -- Learning to care for the dying / Alan C. Mermann -- Thoughts on witnessing death / James D. Kenney -- The changing face of death in children / Diane M. Komp -- When children mourn a loved one / Morris A. Wessel -- The emergence of hospice care in the United States / Florence S. Wald -- Caring for those who die in old age / Joanne Lynn -- Living in the maelstrom / Alvin Novick -- An ars moriendi for our time : to live a fulfilled life ; to die a peaceful death / Arthur E. Imhof -- The art of dying in Hindu India / Sylvia Vatuk -- Reflections on mortality from a Jewish perspective / James E. Ponet -- Catholic theology's main thoughts on death / Harald Wagner -- The law of the spirits : Chinese popular beliefs / Valerie Hansen -- The meaning of death in Islam / Ira M. Lapidius -- From this world to the next : notes on death and dying in early America / John Demos -- Ars memoriandi : the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt / Peter S. Hawkins -- Bearing the spirit home / Frederick J. Streets -- Witnessing death versus framing death / William B. McCullough -- Conclusion : retrospect and prospect / William J. Bouwsma.