Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death - Softcover

Yalom, Irvin D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0470401818 ISBN 13: 9780470401811

Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 2009

Synopsis

Written in Irv Yalom's inimitable story-telling style, Staring at the Sun is a profoundly encouraging approach to the universal issue of mortality. In this magisterial opus, capping a lifetime of work and personal experience, Dr. Yalom helps us recognize that the fear of death is at the heart of much of our anxiety. Such recognition is often catalyzed by an "awakening experience"-a dream, or loss (the death of a loved one, divorce, loss of a job or home), illness, trauma, or aging. Once we confront our own mortality, Dr. Yalom writes, we are inspired to rearrange our priorities, communicate more deeply with those we love, appreciate more keenly the beauty of life, and increase our willingness to take the risks necessary for personal fulfillment.

About this title

Review

"Irv Yalom has written a beautiful and courageous book – a book that comforts even as it explores and confronts death. Yalom helps us understand that we must all come to grips with a paradox: The physicality of death destroys us; the idea of death saves us."
George Valliant, author of Aging Well, and Director of the Harvard Medical School Study of Adult Development

"Staring at the Sun is a thoughtful reinforcement of the stoicism that we all need in a time when babble and denial are all the rage."
Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great

"Staring at the Sun looks experientially and psycho–dynamically at our deepest fear, and describes with uncommon eloquence and deep humanity how we may arrive at a form of peace. The book is witty and kind and unflinching, a generous mediation that should give comfort to the dying and to those they leave behind."
Andrew Solomon, author, The Noonday Demon, winner of the National Book Award

"Irvin Yalom has written a brave, intelligent book on the last forbidden subject death. I honor his courage and rare insight."
Erica Jong, author, Fear of Flying, Shylock s Daughter, Inventing Memory, and Sappho s Leap

"Yalom is the Scherherazade of the couch, his work a marvelous exercise in storytelling."
Laura Miller, New York Times

"This thoughtful treatment of the ultimate fear has much to offer people of faith, especially Western Christians. Instead of fearing death, which gave birth to religion itself, we can confront it in a true act of faith, and stop denying it through fantasies of immorality. This is a wise book by a wise man about the most taboo of all subjects. Read it, and fear not."
Robin Meyers, minister of Mayflower UCC Church of Oklahoma City, and author of Why the Christian Right is Wrong

"One of America′s finest therapists guides us through one of life′s most challenging tasks in this profoundly helpful book. It will benefit anyone who reads it."
Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen To Good People

"Irvin Yalom writes like an angel about the devils that besiege us."
Rollo May

"In Staring at the Sun, Dr. Yalom shares with us the problems of his patients linked to their mortality, his compassionate, healing insight into their death anxiety, and perhaps most movingly, his own feelings and personal experiences with death. While the existential realities of death, isolation, and meaningless may seem at first bleak and full of despair, Dr. Yalom′s existential approach helps his readers frame these realities in positive and meaningful ways that foster personal growth and intensify our connections to others and to the world around us."
Harold Ramis, Actor, Writer and Director, Ghostbuster, Groundhog Day, and Analyze This

Book Description

A book of wisdom to help us overcome our anxiety of death

Edition details

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0470401818
• ISBN 13: 9780470401811
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320