Funerary practices have long been a classic topic of anthropological inquiry, which has tended to focus on death rituals as expressions and reinforcers of community ties and values. In this book, the author looks at funerals as an urban business, based on her fieldwork at a large Japanese funeral company. Her central theme is the progressive commercialization of what once were ...(展开全部)

The New York Times bestselling coauthor of Sex at Dawn explores the ways in which “progress” has perverted the way we live: how we eat, learn, feel, mate, parent, communicate, work, and die. Most of us have instinctive evidence the world is ending—balmy December days, face-to-face conversation replaced with heads-to-screens zomboidism, a world at constant war, a political syste...(展开全部)

Jerry Broadfield thinks he's a good cop. But he's been charged with extortion - and his former buddies in the NYPD would like to see him laid bare out on a morgue slab for squealing to a committee on police corruption. And when a dead hooker turns up in his apartment, he's saddled with a murder rap as well. Broadfield screams "frame-up" and nobody believes him - except ex-polic...(展开全部)

Through examination of the death penalty in literature, Aaron Aquilina contests Heidegger’s concept of ‘being-towards-death’ and proposes a new understanding of the political and philosophical subject. Dickens, Nabokov, Hugo, Sophocles and many others explore capital punishment in their works, from Antigone to Invitation to a Beheading. Using these varied case studies, Aquilina...(展开全部)

In many ways, divorce is a quintessentially personal decision—the choice to leave a marriage that causes harm or feels unfulfilling to the two people involved. But anyone who has gone through a divorce knows the additional public dimensions of breaking up, from intense shame and societal criticism, to friends’ and relatives’ unsolicited advice. In Intimate Disconnections, Allis...(展开全部)

"A how-to manual for a local or state government that wants to redesign its budget to emphasize and maximize results" ( Minneapolis Star-Tribune ) Already adopted by city governments across the country, this long-awaited paperback edition puts David Osborne and Peter Hutchinson's renowned guide into the hands of all state and local governments facing fiscal crisis. In a time ...(展开全部)

Trapped in a boring, dead-end day job in a department store, stage designer Therese Belivet finds her life forever changed when she encounters--and falls in love with--Carol Aird, an alluring suburban housewife in the midst of a divorce, as they set out on a cross-country odyssey, pursued by a private investigator who forces Carol into choosing between her daughter and her love...(展开全部)

The popularity of pornography is predicated on the idea those participating have given their consent. That is what allows the porn industry to dominate the media economy today, generating staggering sums of money. Looking at behind-the-scenes negotiations and abuses in Japan's massive adult video industry, Akiko Takeyama challenges this pervasive notion with the idea of "involu...(展开全部)

In rural China funerals were conducted locally: on village land by village elders. But in urban areas people have neither land for burials nor elder relatives who can conduct a funeral. Chinese urbanization, which has picked up drastically in the last decades, has involved the creation of cemeteries, state-run funeral homes, and small private funerary businesses. The Funeral of...(展开全部)