A Brief Eternity
A Brief Eternity

Author: Pascal Bruckner

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-02-03

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1509544348

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There is one fundamental thing that has changed in our societies since 1950: life has got longer. Over the last few generations, 20 or 30 years have been added to the duration of our lives. But after the age of 50, human beings experience a kind of suspension: no longer young, not really old, they are, as it were, weightless. It is a reprieve that leaves life open like a swinging door. The increase in life expectancy is a tremendous step forward that upsets everything: relations between generations, patterns of family life, the very meaning of our identity and our destiny. This reprieve is both exciting and frightening. The deadlines are getting shorter, the possibilities are shrinking, but there are still discoveries, surprises and upsetting love affairs. Time has become a paradoxical ally: instead of killing us, it carries us forward. What to do with this ambiguous gift? Is it only a question of living longer or living more intensely? To continue along the same path or to branch out and start again? What about remarriage, a new career? How to avoid the weariness of living, the melancholy of the twilight years, how to get through great joys and great pains? Nourished by both reflections and statistics, drawing on the sources of literature, the arts and history, this book proposes a philosophy of longevity based not on resignation but on resolution. In short, an art of living this life to the full. Is there not a profound joy in being alive at the age when our ancestors already had one foot in the grave? This book is dedicated to all those who dream of a new spring in the autumn of life, and want to put off winter as long as they can.

A Brief Eternity
A Brief Eternity

Author: Paul Beaumont

Publisher:

Published: 2013-10-28

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 9781908675224

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One glorious spring day in London, Jesus Christ rudely interrupts the morning rush hour by returning to Earth. The Second Coming has begun and Jerry, hitherto oblivious to Jesus and all of his friends, finds himself transported to Heaven to live a new life in Paradise. And that's when his troubles really begin... Witty, provocative, subversive and surprising, A Brief Eternity examines mankind's fondest wishes for love, redemption, happiness, immortality and, paradoxically, for death. Along the way it provides answers to the most important questions about the afterlife: what's the food like; who cleans the toilets; and how will the Islamic suicide bombers react when they realise they're all condemned to Hell, forever? A Brief Eternity is best read soon, while there's still time. Just in case...

A Very Brief History of Eternity
A Very Brief History of Eternity

Author: Carlos Eire

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-10-12

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1400831873

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From the author of Waiting for Snow in Havana, a brilliant cultural history of the idea of eternity What is eternity? Is it anything other than a purely abstract concept, totally unrelated to our lives? A mere hope? A frightfully uncertain horizon? Or is it a certainty, shared by priest and scientist alike, and an essential element in all human relations? In A Very Brief History of Eternity, Carlos Eire, the historian and National Book Award–winning author of Waiting for Snow in Havana, has written a brilliant history of eternity in Western culture. Tracing the idea from ancient times to the present, Eire examines the rise and fall of five different conceptions of eternity, exploring how they developed and how they have helped shape individual and collective self-understanding. A book about lived beliefs and their relationship to social and political realities, A Very Brief History of Eternity is also about unbelief, and the tangled and often rancorous relation between faith and reason. Its subject is the largest subject of all, one that has taxed minds great and small for centuries, and will forever be of human interest, intellectually, spiritually, and viscerally.

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death

Author: Caitlin Doughty

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2017-10-03

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 0393249905

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A New York Times and Los Angeles Times Bestseller “Doughty chronicles [death] practices with tenderheartedness, a technician’s fascination, and an unsentimental respect for grief.” —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty embarks on a global expedition to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Zoroastrian sky burials to wish-granting Bolivian skulls, she investigates the world’s funerary customs and expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with dignity. Her account questions the rituals of the American funeral industry—especially chemical embalming—and suggests that the most effective traditions are those that allow mourners to personally attend to the body of the deceased. Exquisitely illustrated by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity is an adventure into the morbid unknown, a fascinating tour through the unique ways people everywhere confront mortality.

Landing on the Edge of Eternity
Landing on the Edge of Eternity

Author: Robert Kershaw

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2018-11-06

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 1681779315

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Early in 1944, German commander Field Marshal Erwin Rommel took a look at the sloping sands and announced "They will come here!” He was referring to "Omaha Beach”. The beach was then transformed into three miles of lethal, bunker-protected arcs of fire, with seaside chalets converted into concrete strongpoints, with layers of barbed wire and mines. When Company A of the US 116th Regiment landed on Omaha Beach in D-Day’s first wave on 6th June 1944, it lost 96% of its effective strength. This was the beginning of the historic day that Landing on the Edge of Eternity narrates hour by hour—midnight to midnight—tracking German and American soldiers fighting across the beachhead. The Wehrmacht thought they had bludgeoned the Americans into submission yet by mid-afternoon, the American troops were ashore. Why were the casualties so grim, and how could the Germans have failed? Juxtaposing the American experience—pinned down, swamped by a rising tide, facing young Wehrmacht soldiers fighting desperately for their lives, Kershaw draws on eyewitness accounts, memories, letters, and post-combat reports to expose the true horrors of Omaha Beach. Landing on the Edge of Eternity is a dramatic historical ride through an amphibious landing that looked as though it might never succeed.

Key to Eternity
Key to Eternity

Author: Mallory M. O’Connor

Publisher: Archway Publishing

Published: 2020-03-13

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1480888222

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Psychic detective Epiphany Mayall is enjoying a lovely evening when her peaceful reverie is suddenly interrupted by a vivid mental image of a naked man sprawled on the ground surrounded by two snakes. Moments later, she realizes her vision is somehow connected to the ancient Mesopotamian story, the Epic of Gilgamesh—a legendary King Gilgamesh who left his home to search for the secret of immortality. Now she must wait for Spirit to send her another clue. Soon, Epiphany finds herself on a new quest to solve a complex mystery. While tracking stolen antiquities and a clay tablet relating to the Epic, Epiphany relies on her psychic abilities and help from private investigator, Maro Gaido, and the FBI’s art-crimes division to help her hone in on the mysterious conspirators lurking in the shadows of the shady, global underworld of the arts and antiquities black market. Can Epiphany and her team locate the Gilgamesh tablet with its map to the flower of immortality before the treasure disappears forever into the private vault of a billionaire art thief? Key to Eternity is the exciting tale of a psychic detective’s new mission to solve the mystery of the Gilgamesh tablet as she is transported around the world in search of stolen treasures.

A Brief History of Eternity
A Brief History of Eternity

Author: Roy E. Peacock

Publisher:

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 9780891075738

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This book has a twofold purpose: the first is to trace the development of cosmology, the study of the universe, and the second is to demonstrate the limitation of science. Dr. Peacock questions the idea that the universe is infinite, showing that science can answer the hows of the universe, but not the whys.

Going Out in Style
Going Out in Style

Author: Douglas Keister

Publisher: Checkmark Books

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 9780816036493

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Architectural photographer Keister and Cronin, the former associate editor of American Cemetary, present a tour of mausoleums located in such cities as Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Captions describe the architectural style, the life of

From Eternity to Here
From Eternity to Here

Author: Sean Carroll

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2010-10-26

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 0452296544

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"An accessible and engaging exploration of the mysteries of time." -Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe Twenty years ago, Stephen Hawking tried to explain time by understanding the Big Bang. Now, Sean Carroll says we need to be more ambitious. One of the leading theoretical physicists of his generation, Carroll delivers a dazzling and paradigm-shifting theory of time's arrow that embraces subjects from entropy to quantum mechanics to time travel to information theory and the meaning of life. From Eternity to Here is no less than the next step toward understanding how we came to exist, and a fantastically approachable read that will appeal to a broad audience of armchair physicists, and anyone who ponders the nature of our world.

A Window on Eternity
A Window on Eternity

Author: Edward O., Wilson

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2014-04-22

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1476747431

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The remarkable story of how one of the most biologically diverse habitats in the world was destroyed, restored, and continues to evolve—with stunning, full-color photographs by two of the world’s best wildlife photographers. A Window on Eternity is a stunning book of splendid prose and gorgeous photography about one of the biologically richest places in Africa and perhaps in the world. Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique was nearly destroyed in a brutal civil war, then was reborn and is now evolv-ing back to its original state. Edward O. Wilson’s personal, luminous description of the wonders of Gorongosa is beautifully complemented by Piotr Naskrecki’s extraordinary photographs of the park’s exquisite natural beauty. A bonus DVD of Academy Award–winning director Jessica Yu’s documentary, The Guide, is also included with the book. Wilson takes readers to the summit of Mount Gorongosa, sacred to the local people and the park’s vital watershed. From the forests of the mountain he brings us to the deep gorges on the edge of the Rift Valley, previously unexplored by biologists, to search for new species and assess their ancient origins. He describes amazing animal encounters from huge colonies of agricultural termites to spe­cialized raider ants that feed on them to giant spi­ders, a battle between an eagle and a black mamba, “conversations” with traumatized elephants that survived the slaughter of the park’s large animals, and more. He pleads for Gorongosa—and other wild places—to be allowed to exist and evolve in its time­less way uninterrupted into the future. As he examines the near destruction and rebirth of Gorongosa, Wilson analyzes the balance of nature, which, he observes, teeters on a razor’s edge. Loss of even a single species can have serious ramifications throughout an ecosystem, and yet we are carelessly destroying complex biodiverse ecosystems with unknown consequences. The wildlands in which these ecosystems flourish gave birth to humanity, and it is this natural world, still evolving, that may outlast us and become our leg­acy, our window on eternity.