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**’It made me rethink the roots of our deepest fears and insecurities, and why we often disappoint ourselves in how we manifest them’ Bill Clinton,** Guardian Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life’s work, *The Denial of Death* is Ernest Becker’s brilliant and impassioned answer to the ‘why’ of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie – man’s refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. The book argues that human civilisation is a defence against the knowledge that we are mortal beings. Becker states that humans live in both the physical world and a symbolic world of meaning, which is where our ‘immortality project’ resides. We create in order to become immortal – to become part of something we believe will last forever. In this way we hope to give our lives meaning. In *The Denial of Death* , Becker sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates decades after it was written.

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