Insights into Meaningful Living
Starred review from September 15, 2017
This book is recommended by BlueInk Review, a fee-based review service devoted exclusively to self-published books. Booklist is happy to partner with BlueInk to bring you the best self-published titles for adults and youth. Stars reflect the decisions of BlueInk reviewers and editors.This thoughtful, creatively edited collection of essays on mortality offers insight and solace (and a dose of gallows humor) to those contemplating their own demisein other words, anyone with a heartbeat. The editors, Harvard psychologist Brooks and prominent social- and emotional-health authority Wilkerson, never come on like a pair of grim reapers. Instead, the broad spectrum of views of the 17 writers they've assembled hereincluding a Buddhist, a Muslim, a grieving mother, a funeral director, and othersshare one buoyant conviction: An open acceptance of the reality of death somehow releases the living to live more joyfully in the present. In these pages, Eastern bliss clearly outranks the common Western fear of a dark end. Rabbi Rifat Sonsino writes that he will make up for the brevity of life by heightening its intensity and living richly, creatively and nobly. Similarly, funeral director Jeff Staab exhorts readers: Fill your world with all the love you can take. Although learning to live fully may seem cliche, the writers manage to imbue the thought with fresh impact, creating an intelligent, diverse volume that belongs on any thinking reader's shelf.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)