Final Acts: Death, Dying, and the Choices We Make

Today most people die gradually, from incremental illnesses, rather than from the heart attacks or fast-moving diseases that killed earlier generations. Given this new reality, the essays in Final Acts explore how we can make informed and caring end-of-life choices for ourselves and for those we loveùand what can happen without such planning.

Nan Bauer-Maglin was formerly a professor of English, Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, and academic director of the CUNY Baccalaureate Program. She is the coeditor of ＂Bad Girls/Good Girls＂: Women, Sex, and Power in the Nineties (with Donna Perry), Women Confronting Retirement: A Nontraditional Guide, and Cut Loose: (Mostly) Older Women on the End of Their (Mostly) Long-Term Relationships (Rutgers University Press).

Donna Perry, a professor of English, teaches literature, writing, and women’s studies courses at William Paterson University. She is the editor of Backtalk: Women Writers Speak Out and coeditor (with Nan Bauer-Maglin) of ＂Bad Girls/Good Girls＂: Women, Sex, and Power in the Nineties (Rutgers University Press).