| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Ian Dowbiggin. A Concise History of Euthanasia: Life, Death, God, and Medicine. (Critical Issues in History.) Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. 2005. Pp. vii, 163. $22.95.
Ian Dowbiggin here covers much the same ground as he does in his more extended and scholarly A Merciful End: The Euthanasia Movement in Modern America (2003). This book, as part of Rowman and Littlefield's "Critical Issues in History," certainly lives up to the first two words in that series' title. The author is an avowed partisan as an outspoken radio and television commentator and an active member of Canada's Pro-Life movement. His book is clearly intended to influence the debate that will surely intensify in the United States. Academic readers may find little new in this study, largely confined to the Western world, but despite its bias and certain flaws it does serve as a useful, clearly written primer on an issue of increasing import.	1
"Euthanasia" in Greek means simply "good death," and in this original sense it seems ever harder to achieve naturally, as an aging population, increasingly prone to illnesses such as cancer, inevitably multiplies demands to short-circuit the pain. But while this demographic fact, plus advances in medical technology, have made assisted suicide an issue as never before, Dowbiggin amply demonstrates his second most important point (following only the need to condemn it on moral grounds), which is that most of the debating points are ancient ones, and that history is essential to understanding them.	. . .

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