Euthanasia

Authors Larson and Amundsen combine impressive talents and backgrounds to survey the history of euthanasia in Christendom. Since Christian attitudes toward suicide are relevant to the discussion of active, voluntary euthanasia, they trace suicide from early Christianity into the modern period. They conclude with three chapters of detailed and penetrating counsel on how Christians should engage the euthanasia debate today.

A splendid achievement. Uhlmann of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., has put together a remarkable range of information and arguments bearing on continuing debates about the end, and ending, of life. The book is that unusual thing, a debate that really lets all sides have at it. There are essays by Ronald Dworkin, Hadley Arkes, Jack Kevorkian, Derek Humphry, Leon Kass, and Gilbert Meilaender, as well as the Ramsey Colloquium's ''Always to Care, Never to Kill,'' plus pertinent court decisions and statements by medical associations. This is an indispensable reference in a controversy that will continue to roil our public life for as long as life continues to be terminal.