Voices of Death

"...Writing...stimulated by series of incidents...several hundred suicide notes...filed away...in the vaults of the coroner's office in Los Angeles; a young woman at a symposium...[later sent] tapes describing her life and her immolation; a diary of a thirty-year old doctor who died of leukemia; pamphlets obtained from Auschwitz written by camp victims...[author's] goals: to share with the reader what I know about death and death documents and the theories I have developed about the psychology of suicide, terminal illness and execution; and, at other times, to stand back out of the way so that the reader may have direct contact with the documents themselves; and finally, to show how the different kinds of life-threatening situations are similar to each other and how each is separate to itself..."--preface.