#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? NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR … OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage
Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir
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.
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While this true story of a young man’s untimely death, it is surprisingly uplifting. This book is much more about life than about the end of it.
A true story well told where a brillaiant scientist faces his approaching end due to a fatal disease.
Life is a gift we have the privilege of living one day at a time. It is unpredictable and should be treasured. When it comes to life, no one has it made. Everyone has the choice of living each day to the full or of just wasting and wishing it away. This books makes us wiser as we vicariously live this short but significant life.
Sad tale of how a man struggles with cancer while trying to tell his story and help others who will face the same struggle.
Beautiful writing and made something so tragic into something inspirational. This book has stayed with me long after I finished the last page.
I thought the author and his wife handled an untenable situation beautifully and helped me in my own dealing with a terminal illness. Did not feel so alone.
This is a NON Fiction book written by a gentle man… his wife and family. His life on this world and his leaving…. Heart wrenching, … a journey through this life shared with the reader. Thank you for the intimacy shared….
Honest and well written.
One of the best books I’ve ever read: well written, excellent vocabulary, educational, and very spiritual and inspirational.
Heart-breaking. As a doctor, he should have known to seek treatment sooner. As a man, we know we don’t always do what “should” be done “when” we should do it.
Well written
This may be one of the most difficult reviews to write because this is one of the most heartbreaking and breathtaking books I’ve ever read. It’s a memoir; it’s a testament; it’s an examined life; it’s an artifact and witness to living with death. But the beauty lies in the immediacy of it all. The narrative is such that you sense the presence, the desperate NOW of it all, that Paul Kalanithi may have also felt at the time he wrote it.
It is unfinished, as his wife (who is also a stunning writer, completing this book in such a way as to evince their completeness as a married couple – my heart aches for her loss, her grief, her sorrow) writes in the Epilogue, or the last 12% of the book, and yet it feels as though he was able to tie up everything he needed to before the end. The memoir shifts to the present tense for his last few pages, and I got this overwhelming sense of hearing him speak from the other side, as though he had written his conclusion after death, in the present, here now and always.
This memoir is a testament to the presence of the spirit, and the life energy that never dies even after the body does. Paul Kalanithi leaves us with an invaluable gift, a timeless and forever kind of offer. He comforts us and yet teaches us about the meaning of Meaning with a capital M. This is a memoir one must read. A person one must know about. A death one will mourn as one delves into the life of this mind, this poetic spirit snuffed out too soon, stolen, I’d imagine, for beatific tasks on other planes and cosmic places.
Great book to help point out that we have only the moment of the present.
Incredible writing; incredible story.
Very sad but also very inspiring true story written by a young surgeon facing his death from cancer.
Deep reflections on what it means to be alive, but in an accessible, easy-to-read language. Moving, makes one reflect on one’s own life.
The author is a deep thinker. It was probably cathartic for him to write this. It was ok. A bit self-serving in a way, but probably a wonderful memory for his wife.
Very relatable, honest, makes you think.
As a lung cancer survivor this book was a must read for me. Life is truly important and I continue to relish it. We all have an expiration date – this book helps each reader prepare for it.
This wonderful book made me think more deeply about life and gratitude.