Passings: Death, Dying, and Unexplained Phenomena

by Carole A Travis-Henikoff, Garniss H Curtis (Foreword by)

Overview

From dream research and global belief systems to such unexplained phenomena as bright lights, prescient dreams, near-death and out-of-body experiences, Passings delves into every aspect of the end of life. Taking a scientific and anthropological approach, Carole A. Travis-Henikoff looks at how other cultures deal with death, how diverse kinds of death are treated differently, and how belief systems set the tone for grieving.

In addition to the use of science and anthropology, Travis-Henikoff includes both her own personal experiences with the end of life as well as the stories of others who help illustrate the striking realities of passing. Beginning with the many deaths that occurred during Travis-Henikoff’s childhood, Passings moves into an up-close-and-personal look at the tragic three-and-a-half-year period when Travis-Henikoff lost her father, husband, grandmother, mother, and daughter.

By combining the personal, the scientific, and the unexplained, Passings offers a comprehensive investigation into the end of life that allows readers to both examine their own individual beliefs about the subject and to gain a better understanding about how we as a species cope with death and dying.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595800480
Publisher:	Santa Monica Press
Publication date:	02/01/2010
Pages:	324
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Carole A. Travis-Henikoff is the author of Dinner with a Cannibal, which was honored by Choice magazine as one of its “Outstanding Academic Titles” of 2008. As an independent scholar specializing in paleoanthropology, she has worked with the Getty Conservation team on the preservation of artifacts at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt, and participated in an archeological dig alongside J. Desmond Clark, Tim White, Nicholas Toth, and Kathy Schick under the auspices of the Institute of Human Origins. She sits on the board of directors for the Stone Age Institute, and has given lectures on paleoanthropology at Loyola University(Chicago) and Rush UniversityMedical Center (Chicago). She divides her time between Chicago, Illinois, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Dr. Garniss H. Curtis is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geology & Geophysics at the Universityof California, Berkeley and Founder of the Berkeley Geochronology Center. He lives in Berkeley, California.

What People are Saying About This

Roger Lewin

I think your book is very important. The wealth of your extraordinary experiences will help many. (Roger Lewin, author, Bones of Contention,Origins Reconsidered, and Principles of Human Evolution)

Daniel Buxhoventon

You have integrated incredible times of reality with experiences we have yet to understand or replicate. And you have kept your head above the waters. I have never read anything to match it. (Daniel Buxhoventon, brain evolution specialist, affiliated faculty member of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of South Carolina)

Kim Fadiman

Anyone who reads this book will live in a larger universe than they did before. (Kim Fadiman)

Harvey Priesler

Here is the other side of cancer. I could see, for the first time, the mates and caregivers of my leukemia patients. I had never paid them any attention and so many of them were in worse shape than the patient. I will never again treat only my patients. How could I not have noticed? (Harvey Priesler, former head of oncology, Rush Medical University)

Andrew Greeley

Carole Travis-Henikoff's fascinating story raises questions and mysteries, the kinds of questions that modern science is often afraid to acknowledge and the kinds of mysteries that both scare us and give us hope. It is folly to ignore how many people have experiences like those she describes. (Father Andrew Greeley, priest, sociologist, journalist, and bestselling author)

Sebastian Fetscher

Passings has helped me greatly to understand the incredible and all too often underestimated power of the mind in controlling our mental, psychological, and physical well-being-even and especially in the proximity of death. (Sebastian Fetscher, MD, Frieburg University Medical Center, Germany)

John Allman

An important book ... for all of those who struggle through the experience of death without anything to guide them through the storms of conflicting emotions. (John Allman, neuroscientist, California Institute of Technology)

Editorial Reviews

"Whatever readers believe regarding death and the supernatural, Travis-Henikoff's tender, wise memoir of love, grief and truth-seeking will help them accept death as an affirmation of life's value."  —Publishers Weekly

"I think your book is very important. The wealth of your extraordinary experiences will help many."  —Roger Lewin, author, Bones of Contention, Origins Reconsidered, and Principles of Human Evolution

"Passings has helped me greatly to understand the incredible and all too often underestimated power of the mind in controlling our mental, psychological, and physical well-being—even and especially in the proximity of death."  —Sebastian Fetscher, MD, Frieburg University Medical Center, Germany

"An important book and should be published for all of those who struggle through the experience of death without anything to guide them through the storms of conflicting emotions."  —John Allman, neuroscientist, California Institute of Technology

“Here is the other side of cancer. I could see, for the first time, the mates and caregivers of my leukemia patients. I had never paid them any attention and so many of them were in worse shape than the patient. I will never again treat only my patients. How could I not have noticed?”  —Harvey Priesler, former head of oncology, Rush Medical University

"You have integrated incredible times of reality with experiences we have yet to understand or replicate. And you have kept your head above the waters. I have never read anything to match it."  —Daniel Buxhoeveden, brain evolution specialist and affiliated faculty member of the department of religious studies at the University of South Carolina

"Carole Travis-Henikoff’s fascinating story raises questions and mysteries, the kinds of questions that modern science is often afraid to acknowledge and the kinds of mysteries that both scare us and give us hope."  —Father Andrew Greeley, priest, sociologist, journalist, and bestselling author

From the Publisher

In the space of just three years, chef Travis-Henikoff (Dinner With a Cannibal) lost five family members: her husband to leukemia; her 80-year-old father to kidney failure; her grieving mother to suicide; her daughter, Kim, to blood clots; and her daughter-in-law to blood disease. Travis-Henikoff's struggle to accept these painful deaths was helped by a number of paranormal experiences, including Kim's premonitory dream (dying in a pool of ice water) and, three nights after her death, the appearance of Kim's spirit in "a thin crackling rod of shimmering white light." After Kim's death, Travis-Henikoff sought out others with stories of loss and the paranormal, finding people who "know, trust and love the sciences, yet fly gracefully through the cosmos of the metaphysical." Travis-Henikoff mines the family lore surrounding her great-grandmother, who held séances, and her own history (including a near-fatal childhood asthma attack), for evidence that she (and her daughter) may have inherited psychic powers; she also considers what she witnessed in the moment of her father and her husband's deaths. Whatever readers believe regarding death and the supernatural, Travis-Henikoff's tender, wise memoir of love, grief and truth-seeking will help them accept death as an affirmation of life's value.

Publishers Weekly