Some Personal Reflections on the History and Current Status of Textbooks in the Field of Death, Dying, and Bereavement

This article is a contribution to recording one dimension of the history of education in the field of death, dying, and bereavement. It offers some personal reflections on the history and current status of textbooks in our field that have been or are currently published in North America. The scope of this reflection looks back on the earliest textbooks in this field published in the 1960s and 1970s and extends to textbooks published in the early 2020s. Critical comments are offered on general trends or on textbooks that are no longer in print, but not on individual titles that are currently available for adoption and instructional use. Because I am the lead author of one such textbook, I do not choose to engage in invidious comparisons. Instead, this article includes descriptions of contemporary textbooks taken from the Amazon website.