Death & Dying, Life & Living, 9th Edition

Charles A. Corr, Donna M. Corr, Kenneth J. Doka

Copyright 2025
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Death & Dying, Life & Living 9th Edition by Charles A. Corr/Donna M. Corr/Kenneth J. Doka

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Overview
Meet the Authors
What's New
Features
Table of Contents
Pricing

Overview

Corr/Corr/Doka's DEATH & DYING, LIFE & LIVING, 9th EDITION, reflects a wealth of experience and insights from authors who have made outstanding contributions to the field of death, dying and bereavement. In addition to describing classical materials and their own ground-breaking task-based approaches for individual, family and community coping, this edition offers up-to-date treatment of the COVID-19 pandemic in each chapter. It also discusses the opioid epidemic, drug overdose deaths, “deaths of despair,” and the recent decline in average life expectancy in the U.S. population as a whole and among certain groups. This edition continues the commitment to developmental issues by including four full chapters on death-related issues as they involve children, adolescents, young and middle-aged adults and older adults. This book can be used as a primary textbook for courses in death, dying, and bereavement; as a supplementary text in related courses; or as a general resource.

Meet the Authors

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Charles A. Corr

Dr. Charles A. Corr has been teaching and writing in the field of death, dying and bereavement since 1975. He is a long-term member of both ADEC (Board of Directors, 1980-1983) and IWG (Chairperson, 1989-1993). Dr. Corr is a prolific contributor to this field, having been author, co-author or co-editor of 40 books and more than 140 chapters and articles in professional journals. His professional work has been recognized by three awards from ADEC (for Outstanding Personal Contributions to the Advancement of Knowledge in the Field of Death, Dying, & Bereavement, 1988; Death Educator Award, 1996; and Lifetime Achievement Award, 2020); the Herman Feifel Award for Lifetime Achievement from IWG; and awards from Children's Hospice International, the Center for Death Education and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, and the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation.

Donna M. Corr

Donna M. Corr has worked as a nurse in a variety of critical care, oncology and hospice settings. She is a former member of IWG and was for 17 years a faculty member (rising from instructor to professor) in the Nursing Faculty of St. Louis Community College at Forest Park. She was then a lecturer for two semesters at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Her publications include five books and more than two dozen articles and chapters. Books edited by Donna and/or Charles Corr have received five Book of the Year Awards from the American Journal of Nursing.

Kenneth J. Doka

Kenneth J. Doka (Ph.D., FT) is a professor emeritus of counseling at the graduate school of The College of New Rochelle, an ordained Lutheran minister, a licensed mental health counselor and senior vice-president to The Hospice Foundation of America, for whom he hosts annual teleconferences and edits the monthly newsletter (Journeys: A Newsletter to Help in Bereavement). Dr. Doka introduced the groundbreaking concepts of disenfranchised grief and adaptive grieving styles. His publications include over 100 chapters and articles in professional journals, as well as 40 books, the most recent of which are DISENFRANCHISED GRIEF: NEW DIRECTIONS, CHALLENGES, AND STRATEGIES FOR PRACTICE (2002); COUNSELING INDIVIDUALS WITH LIFE-THREATENING ILLNESS (2009); GRIEVING BEYOND GENDER: UNDERSTANDING THE WAYS MEN AND WOMEN MOURN (2010); and GRIEF IS A JOURNEY (2016). A long-time member of both ADEC (president, 1993-1994) and IWG (chairperson, 1997-1999), Dr. Doka is editor of Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, one of the two major professional journals in this field. Among many awards, he received a Special Contributions to the Field Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award from ADEC; the Distinguished Alumni Award from his alma mater, Concordia College; and the Herman Feifel Award for Lifetime Achievement from the IWG.

What's New

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This text provides both core structure and room to individualize so that you can implement the content in a way that suits the goals of your specific course.
This text will show you how to teach students about differences among encounters, attitudes and practices within the contemporary American death system.
We employ a task-based approach to help you explain how people can cope with and adapt to new challenges in life and living.
We stress a practical orientation to assist your efforts to show students how they can help themselves and others in meeting death-related challenges.
We emphasize distinctive racial, cultural, ethnic and religious patterns of death-related experiences to support your efforts to overcome ethnocentrism.

Features

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We strive to assist you in demonstrating to your students that a course on death, dying and bereavement has important lessons to offer about life and living.
The underlying structure of this text draws on extensive demographic and mortality data, including final data available on deaths, deaths rates and causes for the following groups: the U.S. population as a whole; four selected cultural and racial subgroups; children, adolescents, young and middle-aged adults and older adults; and Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. We also provide the most recent NCHS data available on average life expectancy and place of death, as well as on accidental deaths, homicide and overdose drug deaths.
Our prologue is Dick Kalish’s delightful story called “The Horse on the Dining-Room Table,” in which the Guru tells us: “[I]f you speak about the horse, then you will find that others can also speak about the horse -- most others, at least, if you are gentle and kind as you speak…You cannot make magic to have the horse disappear, but you can speak of the horse and thereby render it less powerful.” That is the guidance everyone needs for coming together in the course.
Each of the 20 chapters in this text begins with a Vignette or Case Study to set the context for the materials that follow.
Figures (9) and Tables (29) draw together data, insights and illustrative models for instruction.
Focus On boxes (58) explore specific topics or provide resources for further exploration: HIV/AIDS; how death systems responded to natural disasters; what children's books can teach us about cultural differences, pet loss, suicide, Buddhist perspectives and individuals affected by Alzheimer's disease; the bereavement of service dog owners; typical cost items for funeral services; funeral and bereavement resources; Sudden Infant Death Syndrome; practical ways to help suicidal persons; and how Robin Williams and Glen Campbell responded differently to their dementia diagnoses.
Personal Insights boxes (40) offer unique points of view, including the following: a chaplain's reflection on differences between his role and that of a pastor; a poem reflecting on the so-called "five stages of grief"; a bill of rights composed by grieving teens; a wife whose cervical fusion was based on donated bone from her deceased husband; a person with a progressive paralysis who compares her situation to that of the wounded man in the Good Samaritan parable; advice from two women who have lived with a spouse who died from different dementias; and numerous accounts of personal bereavement.
Issues for Critical Reflection boxes (18) spark discussion on topics including the following: differences in key mortality statistics between the United States and Canada; mass murders; what we can learn from the legacy of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross; the value of talking to children about death; criticisms of living wills; artificial feeding for people in permanent vegetative states; and Oregon's Death with Dignity Act.
Controversial topics are addressed that are often not covered or not explained well in other books, including assisted suicide, euthanasia and aid in dying; recent developments in aided death in Oregon, the Netherlands and Canada; organ and tissue donation; the COVID-19 pandemic; the opioid epidemic; “deaths of despair”; pediatric palliative and hospice care; perinatal palliative care; death-related issues involving adolescents; and extensive descriptions of death-related literature for young readers.

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Part I: LEARNING ABOUT DEATH, DYING AND BEREAVEMENT.
1. Education about Death, Dying, and Bereavement.
Part II: DEATH.
2. Changing Encounters with Death.
3. Changing Attitudes toward Death.
4. Death-Related Practices and the American Death System.
5. Cultural Patterns and Death.
Part III: DYING.
6. Coping with Dying.
7. Coping with Dying: How Individuals Can Help.
8. Coping with Dying: How Communities Can Help.
Part IV: BEREAVEMENT
9. Coping with Loss and Grief.
10. Coping with Loss and Grief: How Individuals Can Help.
11. Coping with Loss and Grief: Funeral Practices and Other Ways Communities Can Help.
PART V: DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVES.
12. Children.
13. Adolescents.
14. Young and Middle-Aged Adults.
15. Older Adults.
Part VI: LEGAL, CONCEPTUAL, AND MORAL ISSUES.
16. Legal Issues.
17. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior.
18. Aided Death: Assisted Suicide, Euthanasia, and Aid in Dying.
19. The Meaning and Place of Death in Life.
Part VII: AN EXAMPLE OF A SPECIFIC DISEASE ENTITY.
20. Illustrating the Themes of This Book: Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders.
Epilogue: Calendar Date Gives Mom Reason to Contemplate Life.
Appendix A. Selected Literature for Children: Annotated Descriptions.
Appendix B. Selected Literature for Adolescents: Annotated Descriptions.
Appendix C. Activity Books and Memory Books for Young Readers: Annotated Descriptions.