Hereafter: Searching for Immortality - Softcover

Schweid, Richard

3.83

6 ratings by Goodreads

9781560256571: Hereafter: Searching for Immortality

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1560256575 ISBN 13: 9781560256571

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Unusual book

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Synopsis:

As long as people have been on earth, they have constructed various explanations of what happens after death. Hereafter combines an overview of the history of these theories and a survey of the current attitudes toward immortality. Other than physical form and genetic structure, we hold little in common with our earliest ancestors in terms of how we live, but one thing we do share is fear and helplessness in the face of the fact that this self, which takes so much effort to construct and inhabit and nurture, is likely to last considerably less than a century. Responses to the prospect of dying can be organized into three main categories: those who believe that somehow we shall be resurrected to pass eternity with intact bodies as the same people we were during our earthly sojourns; those who believe that what survives is a "soul", or essence, which leaves behind forever the dead and decomposing receptacle in which it resided to move on in some fashion; and those who believe that death erases our lives entirely.

Schweid augments his research with interviews with Yale Divinity School theologians, biotechnologists, farmers, garbage collectors, bail bondsmen, preachers, rabbis, imams and soldiers.

About the Author:

Richard Schweid was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and now lives in Barcelona, Spain, where he is senior editor of the magazine Barcelona Metropolitan. His books include Che's Chevrolet: Fidel's Oldsmobile: On the Road in Cuba; Consider the Eel (winner, best sci-tech book of 2002, Library Journal); Catfish and the Delta: Confederate Fish Farming in the Mississippi Delta; Hot Peppers: The Story of Cajuns and Capsicum; and The Cockroach Papers: A Compendium of History and Lore.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.