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When Breath Becomes Air Hardcover – Deckle Edge, January 12, 2016

by Paul Kalanithi (Author), Abraham Verghese (Foreword)

109,407 ratings

Editors' pick Best Biographies & Memoirs

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question, What makes a life worth living?

“Unmissable . . . Finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, People, NPR, The Washington Post, Slate, Harper’s Bazaar, Time Out New York, Publishers Weekly, BookPage

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir

From the Publisher

when breath becomes air;nonfiction books best sellers;inspirational books;medical memoir;grief book

WARNING: California’s Proposition 65

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of January 2016: When Breath Becomes Air is a powerful look at a stage IV lung cancer diagnosis through the eyes of a neurosurgeon. When Paul Kalanithi is given his diagnosis he is forced to see this disease, and the process of being sick, as a patient rather than a doctor--the result of his experience is not just a look at what living is and how it works from a scientific perspective, but the ins and outs of what makes life matter. This heart-wrenching book will capture you from page one and still have you thinking long after the final sentence. –Penny Mann

Review

“I guarantee that finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option. . . . Part of this book’s tremendous impact comes from the obvious fact that its author was such a brilliant polymath. 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.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“Paul Kalanithi’s memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, written as he faced a terminal cancer diagnosis, is inherently sad. But it’s an emotional investment well worth making: a moving and thoughtful memoir of family, medicine and literature. It is, despite its grim undertone, accidentally inspiring.”—The Washington Post

“Kalanithi uses the pages in this book to not only tell his story, but also share his ideas on how to approach death with grace and what it means to be fully alive.”—James Clear, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Atomic Habits

“Paul Kalanithi’s posthumous memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, possesses the gravity and wisdom of an ancient Greek tragedy. . . . The book brims with insightful reflections on mortality that are especially poignant coming from a trained physician familiar with what lies ahead. . . .”—The Boston Globe

“Devastating and spectacular . . . [Kalanithi] is so likeable, so relatable, and so humble, that you become immersed in his world and forget where it’s all heading.”—USA Today

“It’s [Kalanithi’s] unsentimental approach that makes When Breath Becomes Air so original—and so devastating. . . . Its only fault is that the book, like his life, ends much too early.”—Entertainment Weekly

“[When Breath Becomes Air] split my head open with its beauty.”—Cheryl Strayed

“Rattling, heartbreaking, and ultimately beautiful, the too-young Dr. Kalanithi’s memoir is proof that the dying are the ones who have the most to teach us about life.”—Atul Gawande

“Thanks to When Breath Becomes Air, those of us who never met Paul Kalanithi will both mourn his death and benefit from his life. This is one of a handful of books I consider to be a universal donor—I would recommend it to anyone, everyone.”—Ann Patchett

“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. 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.”—Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery

About the Author

Paul Kalanithi was a neurosurgeon and writer. He grew up in Kingman, Arizona, and graduated from Stanford University with a BA and MA in English literature and a BA in human biology. He earned an MPhil in history and philosophy of science and medicine from the University of Cambridge and graduated cum laude from the Yale School of Medicine, where he was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha national medical honor society. He returned to Stanford to complete his residency training in neurological surgery and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience, during which he received the American Academy of Neurological Surgery’s highest award for research. He died in March 2015. He is survived by his large, loving family, including his wife, Lucy, and their daughter, Elizabeth Acadia.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Part I

In Perfect Health I Begin

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones,

And caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry.

And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live?

—Ezekiel 37:1–3, King James translation

I knew with certainty that I would never be a doctor. I stretched out in the sun, relaxing on a desert plateau just above our house. My uncle, a doctor, like so many of my relatives, had asked me earlier that day what I planned on doing for a career, now that I was heading off to college, and the question barely registered. If you had forced me to answer, I suppose I would have said a writer, but frankly, thoughts of any career at this point seemed absurd. I was leaving this small Arizona town in a few weeks, and I felt less like someone preparing to climb a career ladder than a buzzing electron about to achieve escape velocity, flinging out into a strange and sparkling universe.

I lay there in the dirt, awash in sunlight and memory, feeling the shrinking size of this town of fifteen thousand, six hundred miles from my new college dormitory at Stanford and all its promise.

I knew medicine only by its absence—specifically, the absence of a father growing up, one who went to work before dawn and returned in the dark to a plate of reheated dinner. When I was ten, my father had moved us—three boys, ages fourteen, ten, and eight—from Bronxville, New York, a compact, affluent suburb just north of Manhattan, to Kingman, Arizona, in a desert valley ringed by two mountain ranges, known primarily to the outside world as a place to get gas en route to somewhere else. He was drawn by the sun, by the cost of living—how else would he pay for his sons to attend the colleges he aspired to?—and by the opportunity to establish a regional cardiology practice of his own. His unyielding dedication to his patients soon made him a respected member of the community. When we did see him, late at night or on weekends, he was an amalgam of sweet affections and austere diktats, hugs and kisses mixed with stony pronouncements: “It’s very easy to be number one: find the guy who is number one, and score one point higher than he does.” He had reached some compromise in his mind that fatherhood could be distilled; short, concentrated (but sincere) bursts of high intensity could equal . . . whatever it was that other fathers did. All I knew was, if that was the price of medicine, it was simply too high.

From my desert plateau, I could see our house, just beyond the city limits, at the base of the Cerbat Mountains, amid red-rock desert speckled with mesquite, tumbleweeds, and paddle-shaped cacti. Out here, dust devils swirled up from nothing, blurring your vision, then disappeared. Spaces stretched on, then fell away into the distance. Our two dogs, Max and Nip, never grew tired of the freedom. Every day, they’d venture forth and bring home some new desert treasure: the leg of a deer, unfinished bits of jackrabbit to eat later, the sun-bleached skull of a horse, the jawbone of a coyote.

My friends and I loved the freedom, too, and we spent our afternoons exploring, walking, scavenging for bones and rare desert creeks. Having spent my previous years in a lightly forested suburb in the Northeast, with a tree-lined main street and a candy store, I found the wild, windy desert alien and alluring. On my first trek alone, as a ten-year-old, I discovered an old irrigation grate. I pried it open with my fingers, lifted it up, and there, a few inches from my face, were three white silken webs, and in each, marching along on spindled legs, was a glistening black bulbous body, bearing in its shine the dreaded blood-red hourglass. Near to each spider a pale, pulsating sac breathed with the imminent birth of countless more black widows. Horror let the grate crash shut. I stumbled back. The horror came in a mix of “country facts” (Nothing is more deadly than the bite of the black widow spider) and the inhuman posture and the black shine and the red hourglass. I had nightmares for years.

The desert offered a pantheon of terrors: tarantulas, wolf spiders, fiddlebacks, bark scorpions, whip scorpions, centipedes, diamondbacks, sidewinders, Mojave greens. Eventually we grew familiar, even comfortable, with these creatures. For fun, when my friends and I discovered a wolf spider’s nest, we’d drop an ant onto its outer limits and watch as its entangled escape attempts sent quivers down the silk strands, into the spider’s dark central hole, anticipating that fatal moment when the spider would burst from its hollows and seize the doomed ant in its mandibles. “Country facts” became my term for the rural cousin of the urban legend. As I first learned them, country facts granted fairy powers to desert creatures, making, say, the Gila monster no less an actual monster than the Gorgon. Only after living out in the desert for a while did we realize that some country facts, like the existence of the jackalope, had been deliberately created to confuse city folk and amuse the locals. I once spent an hour convincing a group of exchange students from Berlin that, yes, there was a particular species of coyote that lived inside cacti and could leap ten yards to attack its prey (like, well, unsuspecting Germans). Yet no one precisely knew where the truth lay amid the whirling sand; for every country fact that seemed preposterous, there was one that felt solid and true. Always check your shoes for scorpions, for example, seemed plain good sense.

When I was sixteen, I was supposed to drive my younger brother, Jeevan, to school. One morning, as usual, I was running late, and as Jeevan was standing impatiently in the foyer, yelling that he didn’t want to get detention again because of my tardiness, so could I please hurry the hell up, I raced down the stairs, threw open the front door . . . and nearly stepped on a snoozing six-foot rattlesnake. It was another country fact that if you killed a rattlesnake on your doorstep, its mate and offspring would come and make a permanent nest there, like Grendel’s mother seeking her revenge. So Jeevan and I drew straws: the lucky one grabbed a shovel, the unlucky one a pair of thick gardening gloves and a pillowcase, and through a seriocomic dance, we managed to get the snake into the pillowcase. Then, like an Olympic hammer thrower, I hurled the whole out into the desert, with plans to retrieve the pillowcase later that afternoon, so as not to get in trouble with our mother.

Of our many childhood mysteries, chief among them was not why our father decided to bring his family to the desert town of Kingman, Arizona, which we grew to cherish, but how he ever convinced my mother to join him there. They had eloped, in love, across the world, from southern India to New York City (he a Christian, she a Hindu, their marriage was condemned on both sides, and led to years of familial rifts—my mother’s mother never acknowledged my name, Paul, instead insisting I be called by my middle name, Sudhir) to Arizona, where my mother was forced to confront an intractable mortal fear of snakes. Even the smallest, cutest, most harmless red racer would send her screaming into the house, where she’d lock the doors and arm herself with the nearest large, sharp implement—rake, cleaver, ax.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House; 1st edition (January 12, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 228 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 081298840X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0812988406
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.19 x 0.91 x 7.79 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,053 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Medical Professional Biographies
- #3 in Death
- #44 in Memoirs (Books)

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Abraham Verghese
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ABRAHAM VERGHESE is the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor and Vice Chair of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine. He sees patients, teaches students, and writes.
From 1990 to 1991, Abraham Verghese attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at The University of Iowa, where he obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree.
His first book, MY OWN COUNTRY, about AIDS in rural Tennessee, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for 1994 and was made into a movie directed by Mira Nair and starring Naveen Andrews, Marisa Tomei, Glenne Headley and others.
His second book, THE TENNIS PARTNER, was a New York Times notable book and a national bestseller.
His third book, CUTTING FOR STONE was an epic love story, medical story and family saga. It appeared in hardback in 2009, and is in its 9th printing and is being translated into 16 languages. It is a Vintage paperback and was on the New York Times bestseller list for over 110 weeks at this writing.
His latest novel, THE COVENANT OF WATER, is forthcoming from Grove Press (May 2, 2023).
Verghese has honorary degrees from five universities and has published extensively in the medical literature, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Granta, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama in 2016.
His writing, both non-fiction and fiction, has to do with his view of medicine as a passionate and romantic pursuit; he sees the bedside skill and ritual of examining the patient as critical, cost saving, time-honored and necessary, though it is threatened in this technological age. He coined the term the 'iPatient' to describe the phenomenon of the virtual patient in the computer becoming the object of attention to the detriment of the real patient in the bed. His is an important voice for humanism in medicine and for anticipating the unwanted consequences of new technologies before they are introduced.
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Paul Kalanithi
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PAUL KALANITHI was a neurosurgeon and writer. He held degrees in English literature, human biology, and history and philosophy of science and medicine from Stanford and Cambridge universities before graduating from Yale School of Medicine. He also received the American Academy of Neurological 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 and in his New York Times number one bestselling book, When Breath Becomes Air.
Kalanithi died in March 2015, aged 37. He is survived by his wife, Lucy, and their daughter, Elizabeth Acadia
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Customers find this book utterly sublime, with eloquent writing that paints a vivid picture of the author's life. The story is powerful and moving, with an extraordinarily moving epilogue that stays with readers, and they appreciate the author's unwavering strength through adversity. Customers describe the book as deeply philosophical, with good insights into life and death, and they value its honesty and authenticity.

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4,136 customers mention "Readability"4,119 positive17 negative

Customers find the book highly readable, describing it as utterly sublime and a worthwhile read, with one customer noting it provides valuable lessons.

"...would grow to possess an abounding love of philosophy, poetry and literature...." Read more

"A very sad yet also very inspirational tale. What an extraordinary human...." Read more

"...only very a gifted and intelligent individual but also an exceedingly decent human being...." Read more

"...This book is so beautiful and profound because Paul Kalanithi and his wife Lucy stand tall in the face of illness and death and just talk about it...." Read more

3,572 customers mention "Thought provoking"3,509 positive63 negative

Customers find the book thought-provoking, describing it as a deeply philosophical piece that provides good insights into life and death.

"...Through it all though, a simple and clear message, taught more through deed than word echoes: hope, salvation, renewal and healing all exist in..." Read more

"A very sad yet also very inspirational tale. What an extraordinary human...." Read more

"...and face their mortality." Certainly this book serves to remind us of our mortality and, in so doing, of the importance of making informed..." Read more

"...This book is so beautiful and profound because Paul Kalanithi and his wife Lucy stand tall in the face of illness and death and just talk about it...." Read more

2,545 customers mention "Writing quality"2,450 positive95 negative

Customers praise the writing of the book, describing it as eloquent and deep, with one customer noting how it paints a vivid picture of the author's life.

"...This book is, above all, deeply real and human. It offers a brilliantly clear window, through one family's experiences, into a life we all share,..." Read more

"...But Lucy Kalanithi's Epilogue saved it for me. Lucy is a talented writer in her own right...." Read more

"...At the same time this book screams modesty and Paul is a great equalizer, he makes the reader feel equal to him and a lot of the things he said..." Read more

"...I gave this book 5 stars for it’s thought provoking, beautiful prose, as well as for writing it’s way through a death with utmost dignity...." Read more

1,851 customers mention "Heartbreaking story"1,457 positive394 negative

Customers find the book heartrending and sorrowful, with one customer noting how it provides solace for those who are grieving.

"...Of course I expected this book to be powerful and heart-stirring, but in truth I imagined a much more conventional, "appreciate what you have,..." Read more

"A very sad yet also very inspirational tale. What an extraordinary human...." Read more

"...The book was finished in tears but largely because I was remembering a lot of what happened when my father was terminally ill and just feeling..." Read more

"...It is a beautifully, heartrending, deeply philosophical piece by an accomplished young man who dedicated heart and mind to his work and study in..." Read more

1,463 customers mention "Story quality"1,416 positive47 negative

Customers find the book's story compelling and comforting, with an extraordinarily moving epilogue that provides a beautiful conclusion.

"...structure of the book covers the chronology of an exceptional young man's life, his childhood, his ascension through levels of academic and medical..." Read more

"...This was a very interesting perspective from someone who knew his time on earth was limited and what he chose to do with that time...." Read more

"...The story tugs at the heartstrings and is certainly dramatic in the most visceral sense of the word...." Read more

"...I admit the book wasn't easy reading for me, but it was pleasurable and I finished book in two nights...." Read more

542 customers mention "Courage"542 positive0 negative

Customers praise the author's unwavering strength and courage throughout his journey, particularly in facing his own death with grace.

"...It triggered deep reflection about health and disease, living and dying, wisdom and folly...." Read more

"What a gift Paul was & his book is. Unwavering strength through his journey. Hard to put the book down until his wife wraps up his story." Read more

"...It epitomizes the life of a man who faced death with integrity and genuinely struggled for existential answers to the question "what makes human..." Read more

"...all the more poignant to those who encounter this man of impeccable strength and character." Read more

514 customers mention "Authenticity"514 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's authenticity, describing it as honest and deeply real, with one customer noting how the author's first-person perspective resonates throughout the narrative.

"...This book is, above all, deeply real and human...." Read more

"...This book is refreshing for its honesty and especially for Paul's refusal to give in to platitudes like, "We are going to beat it!" "We..." Read more

"...’s writing style, is simple, straightforward, eloquent, and unflinchingly honest – Prologue, Part I and Part II...." Read more

"...but she expresses their love story in such a starkly beautiful and honest way. I thank her for fulfilling Paul's wish to get this book published...." Read more

437 customers mention "Pacing"424 positive13 negative

Customers find the pacing of the book very moving and riveting, noting that it stays with readers throughout.

"...This is a book that stays with you. It’s a lucid exposition from a consummate insider on the practice of medicine and work of healing...." Read more

"...Throughout, Kalanithi’s writing is alternately beautiful and cringe-worthily heavy-handed..." Read more

"An extremely moving and impactful life story" Read more

"...The book is slim (229 pages) but extraordinarily powerful, moving, poetic, and philosophical...." Read more

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Chris Zimmerman
Among the very best
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2016
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This book would be extremely hard for me to categorize.

Let me address the obvious first - the superficial structure of the book covers the chronology of an exceptional young man's life, his childhood, his ascension through levels of academic and medical training, culminating in a career as a Neurosurgeon. It is then here, on the cusp of fully manifesting all the years of effort, that young Dr. Kalanithi is confronted with a diagnosis of cancer...ultimately proving to be terminal.

Of course I expected this book to be powerful and heart-stirring, but in truth I imagined a much more conventional, "appreciate what you have, stop and smell the roses" sort of missive that we've oft seen before.

This book is something very different indeed.

Though I never had the pleasure of meeting the brilliant Dr. Kalanithi, and while I fully acknowledge how presumptuous this might sound, I honestly left this book feeling as if I'd just experienced Dr. Kalanithi's crowning achievement. My honest thought was: this man was born to write this book.

The Doctor's account of his early life depicts a young man with a sort of dreamy, very rich inner world. This young man would grow to possess an abounding love of philosophy, poetry and literature. Despite coming from a family of doctors, young Paul seemed destined for the life of a novelist.

Perhaps the defining and inspiring characteristic of the author is a relentless, uncompromising curiosity. "Why am I alive? What is life all about?" These are the questions the author bravely confronts even as a very young man.

As Paul's search for meaning leads him to the very place where these questions arise from, i.e. the brain itself, Paul realizes his quest is leading him into medicine.

This reflects a trend we see throughout Paul's life that long precedes his cancer diagnosis. Throughout his life, Paul exhibits the focused drive of an Arthurian Grail Knight. When the road deviates, Paul continues forward unblinkingly. It sets a positive and powerful example.

There is much more here too.

There is also an incredible, overwhelming sweetness in Paul's marriage and family. There are dizzying heights and gut-wrenching lows.

Through it all though, a simple and clear message, taught more through deed than word echoes: hope, salvation, renewal and healing all exist in myriad forms for all of us. In opening our hearts to one another, sharing one another's joys and sorrows, and perhaps most of all, opening our heart to what life places before us and embracing challenges with courage and dignity we will all find our own path to meaning and purpose.

This book is, above all, deeply real and human. It offers a brilliantly clear window, through one family's experiences, into a life we all share, i.e. a life that is both finite and yet demanding of us to find our purpose within it.

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Shelli
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Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2025
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A very sad yet also very inspirational tale. What an extraordinary human. This was a somewhat difficult read for me because I lost my husband after 22 years of marriage after a freak accident took his life at the age of 44. I could somewhat relate to what Paul's wife and family went through. This was a very interesting perspective from someone who knew his time on earth was limited and what he chose to do with that time. I wish we all could appreciate the life we have without having to face death to understand the value of the gifts we've been given.

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CA_Consumer
Read Part I
Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2016
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If I had the ability to clone myself and travel in time to the future, sending useful notes to myself in the present, the message I would send myself about this book would be: "Read Part I and, time permitting, the epilogue. Skip the rest."

I say this only after considerable thought, reluctant to imply any disrespect to the author. Dr. Kalanithi was clearly not only very a gifted and intelligent individual but also an exceedingly decent human being. His premature and tragic death represents not only a loss at a personal level but a tremendous loss for the medical and scientific community, in view of all the good that he would certainly have been able to accomplish for humanity. At the same time, I think that Dr. Kalanithi himself would not want anyone to give him a pass on his literary endeavor, on the basis of empathy for his personal situation.

The author is at his best in Part I, which offers readers an intimate, inside look into the world of a practicing neurosurgeon. Those not familiar with this world will find Dr. Kalanithi's account both fascinating and enlightening, in its authenticity and honesty.

Part II (about half the book) chronicles the development of the author’s illness. The story tugs at the heartstrings and is certainly dramatic in the most visceral sense of the word. Here the author struggles to impart any clear message, however, often getting bogged down in cumbersome literary analogies and lengthy quotations from a variety of poets, philosophers and other writers throughout the ages. As the author acknowledges toward the end of Part II, "I've been reading science and literature trying to find the right perspective but I haven't found it."

In my own careful reading of the book, the closest I could find to any clear message is the author's assertion that "each of us can see only a part of the picture," with the truth to be found "somewhere above" all the different interpretations. He also mentions having "returned to the central values of Christianity" and "the main message of Jesus … that mercy trumps justice every time." These are entirely legitimate and worthy thoughts but is it worth wading through a hundred pages for them?

I suspect that a good editor at a top publisher like Random House would have sent such a manuscript back to the author for extensive revision, IF he were alive. But this book of course was published posthumously. The author did not have the luxury of the time he would have needed to make this book truly top-notch. In the context of his pain and suffering, it is admirable that he managed to write what he did.

In her moving epilogue, the author's wife, Lucy, writes that her late husband "wanted to help people understand death and face their mortality." Certainly this book serves to remind us of our mortality and, in so doing, of the importance of making informed decisions about how to live our lives. In this sense, it can certainly be considered a success.

Daniel K. Berman, Ph.D., Amazon author
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profondément touchant
Reviewed in France on December 22, 2024
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C’est la première fois que j’écris un commentaire mais je m’en sens obligé. EN tant qu’étudiant en médecine ce livre m’a bouleversé et je pense que toute personne dans le domaine médical devrait avoir à le lire.

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Definitely recommend
Reviewed in Singapore on January 11, 2021
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A really good read.

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Leitir
You must read this book - you simply must.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 8, 2016
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"It can be as uncomfortable as it is peaceful, both communal and lonely—like death, like grief—but there is beauty in all of it, and I think this is good and right." This is Lucy, wife of Paul, the book's author, writing at the end of the book on her experience of visiting her husband's graveside. Such is the authenticity of emotion, and the depth of humanity, in the book, that you could throw a stone and find another paragraph or line that would eloquently express another stratum of thought and feeling, that would resonate with your core.
This is an extraordinarily profound book. Three voices, one powerful narrative whose layers of meaning and insight will take some time to properly reflect on. A colleague writes the foreword, Paul himself writes the body of the book, and his wife closes. Paul is / was clearly a very wise and erudite man - but he was also a wonderful human being. His wife draws this out in her own closing remarks. So while the book is ostensibly about grappling with the interweaving of life, death and our own individual and collective consciousness, it is also a powerful and empowering declaration of the beauty, of the complex simplicity, of our fundamental human nature.
While Paul is clearly a gifted writer, I think that his wife outshines him, if only a little. This gift may well have been forged in the terrible beauty of crucible that was their experience together - and it augments the overall impact of the book that is clearly the fruits of his own reflections and energies.
It is at times upsetting to read this in the knowledge of the outcome. But to dwell on that alone would be to miss at least one of the key messages that the author is seeking to teach us - that even when the night is darkest, you can and must light a new light, bathed in love - a light that will illuminate you and your loved ones in the here and now, and act as a beacon for others who will come along the path after you.

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Jon Rivers
A beautiful book on living life, accepting death, regardless of when one is fated to die.
Reviewed in Canada on October 18, 2022
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5\5 Not a fraction less. As I finished this book tears rolled down both my cheeks. Breathing was hard for the last 40 pages, as I struggle to choke back the conflicting emotions I felt in reading Paul's last words and those his wife Lucy would conclude with. On the one hand I felt heartbroken with sorrow for the fate of this man who would strive so hard to help others live or to ease the agony of those who would die. Yet this book was as heart wrenching as it was beautiful. It was as uplifting as it was sad.

This book deeply touched me on an emotional and what some would call a spiritual level. While I am not spiritual, I cannot deny the spirit of this man, who lived, loved, triumphed and accepted his fate with courage and strength, even as cancer weakened him physiologically.

Paul died very near my own age. I struggle to find meaning in life, especially as I see others die around me every year. I also grapple with my own impending end which could come any moment, future or present. I began to question everything as I've aged. I fear perhaps I have made the wrong choices in life. I question what it is all for. Being an atheist is a blessing and a curse, for it gives life at times a hollow definition. We live to die. Most of us spend the majority of our lives dying, or declining until our last day. This does not have to be a sad thing though. This book has revealed to me that there is another way in which to die. That is, to live... until death.

From the bottom of my heart I am thankful to Paul, for this book, and to Lucy for her epilogue, for her kind words which will touch my own spirit, my core being, until the end. It will forever remind me that our fate may not always be what we want it to be but our lives are what we will make of them. We will all die, some sooner, some later. This is a fact. While we live to die this does not mean we cannot also live to live, to live life appreciatively.

While I do not share the expansive and loving family Paul did and while I feel at times vastly alone in this world, I have learned the deep lessons of this book. I have no one to truly comfort me in my sorrows as I grind through life. This book, these words, are my comfort. Alone we embrace, this philosophy and I. I am not dying such as Paul was. I am merely dying as life would naturally have it, as we all are, until something decides to speed this natural process up, like a cancer or some other malignance. I merely suffer the physiological strife that comes with working on a farm in rural Nova Scotia. I toil so others may not. Someone must till the soil, grow the food, harvest from life to give life. Though I often feel I should be doing more.

My English degree hangs on a wall, a banner of achievement, yet a reminder of failure. I relate to Paul in that, like him, I want to help others. After all, there is no better feeling than having consoled or counselled another. I have often had the dream of using words to ease the pain of suffering. Paul has awakened me to the fallacy of how I see that piece of paper in the negative. Perhaps I will do no more than I have. Some do nothing. Some live and die, forgotten to the winds of time. The important thing is to understand that life is a treasure. It is a thing to be cherished, this consciousness, this awareness, our ability to think and see and question and comprehend. To compel or be compelled is to live. Whether alone or in the company of loved ones, we should hold dear this thing we call life. Find your happiness where you can. Be it within the pages of a book such as this or in the company of others, seek it and embrace it, for a life lived happily is to truly live. Whether short or long, alone or otherwise, we need not despair the eventuality of our end. Smile, my fellows, for were we not alive, we would not know what it is to live.

Thank you Paul. Thank you Lucy. You have both, in death, and life, warmed my heart beyond what other words have elsewhere been able.

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Marcos Corpa Filho
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Reviewed in Brazil on August 18, 2024
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Livro com reflexões valiosas sobre a vida. Para refletirmos sobre a nossa finitude. Vale a pena ler essa historia inspiradora de um medico que inverte seu papel para de um paciente terminal.

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A beautiful book on living life, accepting death, regardless of when one is fated to die.

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