{"product_id":"the-mansion-of-happiness-a-history-of-life-and-death-paperback","title":"The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eJill Lepore\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eRenowned Harvard scholar and \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e staff writer Jill Lepore has written a strikingly original, ingeniously conceived, and beautifully crafted history of American ideas about life and death from before the cradle to beyond the grave.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow does life begin? What does it mean? What happens when we die? \"All anyone can do is ask,\" Lepore writes. \"That's why any history of ideas about life and death has to be, like this book, a history of curiosity.\" Lepore starts that history with the story of a seventeenth-century Englishman who had the idea that all life begins with an egg, and ends it with an American who, in the 1970s, began freezing the dead. In between, life got longer, the stages of life multiplied, and matters of life and death moved from the library to the laboratory, from the humanities to the sciences. Lately, debates about life and death have determined the course of American politics. Each of these debates has a history. Investigating the surprising origins of the stuff of everyday life--from board games to breast pumps--Lepore argues that the age of discovery, Darwin, and the Space Age turned ideas about life on earth topsy-turvy. \"New worlds were found,\" she writes, and \"old paradises were lost.\" As much a meditation on the present as an excavation of the past, \u003ci\u003eThe Mansion of Happiness\u003c\/i\u003e is delightful, learned, and altogether beguiling.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eJill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker. \u003c\/i\u003eHer books include \u003ci\u003eThe Story of America\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eThe Whites of Their Eyes; New York Burning, \u003c\/i\u003ea finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and \u003ci\u003eThe Name of War, \u003c\/i\u003ewinner of the Bancroft Prize. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 320\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.69 x 8.01 x 5.1 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eIllustrated:\u003c\/strong\u003e Yes\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e March 26, 2013\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51754185228576,"sku":"9780307476456","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0974\/9764\/5344\/files\/820dcaacdd3fdaa29cb08d14537deb50.webp?v=1780035276","url":"https:\/\/ebocreations.com\/products\/the-mansion-of-happiness-a-history-of-life-and-death-paperback","provider":"The E-Book Oasis LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}