#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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Take time and smell the roses!!! Enjoy the now!
Makes you think, and reminds you to make time for what’s really important.
A must read for anyone in loved in po revising healthcare.
True story about a young neurosurgeon who is battling incurable cancer. The story wS bittersweet and sad but the bulk of the book was about experiences with patients and training that I felt took away from the story. I wished there was more to why he wasn’t too afraid to die
This brief book packs a big message. Such a great title.
I loved the book and have recommended it especially to doctor friends. Triumph comes in all sizes. Paul Kalanithi is as outstanding as an authoer as I am sure he was a doctor. I felt his successes and his set-backs. He had me completely absorbed in his life. God rest his soul.
if you need some real advice on death and dying from a professional point of view, this book will bring you clarity. It is a gift for all who watch a loved one in their last moments.
Beautifully told and inspirational.
A gem, of which there are very few. An autobiography about the patient at the center of this drama, I am left in awe, heartbroken, a fuller, more alert person.
Stunningly told story of love and loss.
I recommend this book to anyone and everyone this is an amazing book good couldn’t put the book down read the whole book in just one day
This is a beautifully written autobiographical book that explores love, meaning, hope and faith. A road map for terminal patients who seek to remain vulnerable, to embrace life while facing death. This is sure to become a classic,
This is one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read.
The death and dying of a young physician who can write like a philosopher. His own story
A most profound book about what is really important in life
Loved this book.
An u forgettable memoir…haunting, yet beautiful.
stunningly beautiful!
This book is like a prayer. It took my breath away. Even though I read it three years ago I still think about it. I can’t believe their are people that have lived on this earth like Paul Kalanithi. He lived through such pain and disappointment but remained so good. Though it’s sad I would highly recommend it to anyone.
A breathtakingly brutally honest account of what it is like to receive a fatal diagnosis…and to live through the last months of that utterly horrible disease. There is hope in the end…but the unflinching attention to all the horrible details that modern medicine imposes upon us in such circumstances makes one vow to beg for mercy.