New Books In Medicine

Political Mourning: Identity and Responsibility in the Wake of Tragedy (Temple UP, 2021) moves us, as readers, beyond the stages of grief to consider the effects of mourning. While grief consists of the internal thoughts, feelings, and ideas surrounding a loss, the process of mourning transforms grief into an external expression of those interior experiences. Political Theorist Heather Pool explores the political components to public mourning and poses the question: why are the deaths of certain people politically significant, or what makes an individual’s death politically important? Using critical and normative political theory, Pool answers this question by delving into political identities and the conceptions of responsibility to understand how they coincide with changes and shifts within politics and political institutions. Pool begins the analysis with an exploration of the importance of public mourning within politics; she dissects political identities, framing the edges of belonging, and defining resp