For readers of Atul Gawande's Being Mortal and Henry Marsh's Do No Harm, an unforgettably powerful and heart-breaking book about how to live.
PAUL KALANITHI was a neurosurgeon and writer. He held degrees in English literature, human biology, and history and philoso-phy of science and medicine from Stanford and Cambridge universities before graduating from Yale School of Medicine. He also received the American Academy of Neu-rological Surgery's highest award for research. His reflections on doctoring and illness have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Paris Review Daily. Kalanithi died in March 2015, aged 37. He is survived by his wife, Lucy, and their daughter, Elizabeth Acadia.
A vital book about dying. Awe-inspiring and exquisite.
Obligatory reading for the living. -- Nigella Lawson
Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful. -- Atul Gawande, author
of BEING MORTAL
A great, indelible book ... as intimate and illuminating as
Atul Gawande's "Being Mortal," to cite only one recent example of a
doctor's book that has had exceptionally wide appeal ... I
guarantee that finishing this book and then forgetting about it is
simply not an option ... gripping from the start ... None of it
is maudlin. Nothing is exaggerated. As he wrote to a friend: "It's
just tragic enough and just imaginable enough." And just important
enough to be unmissable. * New York Times *
Powerful and poignant. * The Sunday Times *
Less a memoir than a reflection on life and purpose... A vital
book. * The Economist *
Extraordinary...Remarkable... luminous, revelatory memoir about
mortality and what makes being alive meaningful ... Lyrical,
intimate, insistent and profound. Kalanithi had the mind of the
polymath and the ear of a poet. -- Heather Hodson * Daily Telegraph
*
Powerful and poignant... Elegantly written posthumous
memoir... Should be compulsory for anyone who intends to be a
doctor... A profound reflection on the meaning of life. -- Daisy
Goodwin * Sunday Times *
A stark, fascinating, well-written and heroic memoir. --
Stefanie Marsh * The Times *
The power of this book lies in its eloquent insistence that we are
all confronting our mortality every day, whether we know it or not.
The real question we face, Kalanithi writes, is not how long, but
rather how, we will live - and the answer does not appear in any
medical textbook. -- Alice Okeeffe * Guardian *
Exceptional. -- Katie Law * Evening Standard *
When I came to the end of the last flawless paragraph of When
Breath Becomes Air, all I could do was turn to the first page and
read the whole thing again. Searingly intelligent, beautifully
written, and beyond brave, I haven't been so marked by a book in
years. -- Gabriel Weston, author of DIRECT RED
A tremendous book, crackling with life, animated by wonder
and by the question of how we should live. Paul Kalanithi lived and
died in the pursuit of excellence, and by this testimonial, he
achieved it. -- Gavin Francis, author of Adventures in Human
Being
A remarkable book... Kalanithi writes very well, in a plain
and matter-of-fact way, without a trace of self-pity, and you are
immediately gripped and carried along... [He] was clearly a
deeply thoughtful and compassionate man, and his death is a
great loss to medicine, but at least he has left this remarkable
book behind. -- Dr Henry Marsh * Observer *
A meditation on what makes a life worth living. * Guardian
*
It turns out not really to be about dying at all but about life
and how to live it - though the closeness of death gives it an
urgency and economy... When Breath Becomes Air is a
Renaissance book from a Renaissance man. It is a work of philosophy
and morality, a reconciliation of science and religion. There is
even plot and excitement... It was only with the restrained,
elegant epilogue written by his wife Lucy Kalanithi that I found
myself weeping helplessly... When Breath Becomes Air
tells us what means to live a good life, by giving us a glimpse
into an exceptional one. -- Lucy Kellaway * Financial Times
*
A powerful and compelling read. * The Economist, Book of the Year
*
An astonishingly affecting memoir and eloquent examination
of what it is to be human and confront your own mortality... This
is a remarkable book by a man who was driven by his passion for his
life, his loves and his career. His death is undoubtedly a tragedy
but in writing this memoir he has guaranteed that his voice and the
important story it tells will resonate for years to come. -- Mernie
Gilmore * Daily Express *
As thought-provoking as it was moving. The sheer exuberance
of Kalnithi's intellectual curiosity shone through in his writing.
-- Katie Law * Evening Standard, Book of the Year *
Dr Kalanithi describes, clearly and simply, and entirely without
self-pity, his journey from innocent medical student to
professionally detached and all-powerful neurosurgeon to helpless
patient, dying from cancer. He learns lessons about the reality of
illness and the doctor-patient relationship that most doctors only
learn in old age but Paul Kalanithi died at the tragically early
age of 37.
Every doctor should read this book - written by a member of
our own tribe, it helps us understand and overcome the barriers we
all erect between ourselves and our patients as soon as we are out
of medical school
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