Hilde Lindemann is Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. A Fellow of the Hastings Center and a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, she is also a former editor of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, and the Hastings Center Report. She has written widely on narrative approaches to bioethics, feminist ethics, the ethics of families, and the social construction of persons and their identities.

• Preface ; Acknowledgments ; 1. What Child Is This? The Practice of Personhood ; 2. The Architect and The Bee: Calling the Fetus into Personhood ; 3. Second Persons: The Work of Identity Formation ; 4. Ordinary Identity-Work: How We Usually Go On ; 5. Struggling to Catch Up: Challenges to Identity-Work ; 6. What and When to Let Go: Identities at the End of Life ; 7. What Does It All Mean? ; References ; Index

A valuable addition to the literature on personhood and identity. Like most such texts, it recognizes the ambiguity of the concepts. However, while other texts then try to clarify and fix the ambiguity, Lindemann goes in another direction. She embraces it by presenting and examining the many ways in which practices of social connection, interaction, and disconnection shape, preserve, and even damage an individual's personal and social identity...In an age where the daily news contains stories of murder, rape, and persecution of humans by humans for reasons related to an inability or unwillingness to tolerate others for who they are, Lindemann provides no platitudes. Rather, she calls attention to the real, rollup-your-sleeves phroenetic work of personhood that can only be approached in steps and measured by effort. Her book resonates long after the last page is turned.

Hilde Lindemann is Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. A Fellow of the Hastings Center and a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, she is also a former editor of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, and the Hastings Center Report. She has written widely on narrative approaches to bioethics, feminist ethics, the ethics of families, and the social construction of persons and their identities.

• Preface ; Acknowledgments ; 1. What Child Is This? The Practice of Personhood ; 2. The Architect and The Bee: Calling the Fetus into Personhood ; 3. Second Persons: The Work of Identity Formation ; 4. Ordinary Identity-Work: How We Usually Go On ; 5. Struggling to Catch Up: Challenges to Identity-Work ; 6. What and When to Let Go: Identities at the End of Life ; 7. What Does It All Mean? ; References ; Index

A valuable addition to the literature on personhood and identity. Like most such texts, it recognizes the ambiguity of the concepts. However, while other texts then try to clarify and fix the ambiguity, Lindemann goes in another direction. She embraces it by presenting and examining the many ways in which practices of social connection, interaction, and disconnection shape, preserve, and even damage an individual's personal and social identity...In an age where the daily news contains stories of murder, rape, and persecution of humans by humans for reasons related to an inability or unwillingness to tolerate others for who they are, Lindemann provides no platitudes. Rather, she calls attention to the real, rollup-your-sleeves phroenetic work of personhood that can only be approached in steps and measured by effort. Her book resonates long after the last page is turned.

Hilde Lindemann is Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. A Fellow of the Hastings Center and a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, she is also a former editor of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, and the Hastings Center Report. She has written widely on narrative approaches to bioethics, feminist ethics, the ethics of families, and the social construction of persons and their identities.

• Preface ; Acknowledgments ; 1. What Child Is This? The Practice of Personhood ; 2. The Architect and The Bee: Calling the Fetus into Personhood ; 3. Second Persons: The Work of Identity Formation ; 4. Ordinary Identity-Work: How We Usually Go On ; 5. Struggling to Catch Up: Challenges to Identity-Work ; 6. What and When to Let Go: Identities at the End of Life ; 7. What Does It All Mean? ; References ; Index

A valuable addition to the literature on personhood and identity. Like most such texts, it recognizes the ambiguity of the concepts. However, while other texts then try to clarify and fix the ambiguity, Lindemann goes in another direction. She embraces it by presenting and examining the many ways in which practices of social connection, interaction, and disconnection shape, preserve, and even damage an individual's personal and social identity...In an age where the daily news contains stories of murder, rape, and persecution of humans by humans for reasons related to an inability or unwillingness to tolerate others for who they are, Lindemann provides no platitudes. Rather, she calls attention to the real, rollup-your-sleeves phroenetic work of personhood that can only be approached in steps and measured by effort. Her book resonates long after the last page is turned.