Content area
Full text
The Modern Art of Dying: A History of Euthanasia in the United States. By Shai J. Lavi. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Pp. 240. $29.95 cloth.
As Lavi writes at the beginning of the last chapter of his book,
Our study of euthanasia in America began with colonial times, when the word still signified a pious death blessed by the grace of God. It continued with the medicalization of death in the nineteenth century, which was soon followed by attempts to legalize the hastening of death. The struggle to legalize euthanasia took a radical turn with the founding of the Euthanasia Society of America, when proposals to hasten death were applied to handicapped and mentally retarded patients. The final section of this study compared the legalization of euthanasia with two alternative means of actively hastening death: the sublegal act of legal dosing and the supralegal act of mercy killing (p. 163).
In his study, awarded the ASA Sociology of Law section book prize, Lavi explains how dying has moved from "art" to "technique," from an experience overseen by a minister and family to one of "technique" overseen by doctors and constructed by law. This study charts how medicalization, expertise, and regulation cohere, elevating "pain" to...