#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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a raw and vulnerable window into the author’s life as a surgeon, then patient, walking the yin and yang of healing others and then facing the gut wrenching goodbyes with his loved ones at a young age
This is a non-fiction book that deals with the author’s struggles with issues of life, death, and meaning in a personal and profound way.
An incredibly honest story, that brings you on a journey and leaves you changed. I feel very lucky to have found this book.
Touching and honest autobiography.
Not what I expected. Instead of a tearjerker it shared insight and I’ll love of life. He was ever searching for knowledge and meaning throughout his life and dying. What a terrible loss to humankind.
I was inspired and in awe of this young, caring, and brilliant man’s courage in dealing with cancer and in his determination to live life to the fullest until he no longer could. Yet, he was also determined to share his story from which others could perhaps learn. This is about dying but it’s mostly about living in the face of dying.
All I can say of the adventure you will “experience” in these pages, as a survivor of cancer myself, is that you cannot stop reading. It is not a beautiful story, but one of sheer determination though the author knows the end is painful, sure, and personal. His desire to die with dignity, recalling how his patients would have experienced the dread and terror of cancer, as seen through the eyes of a trained cancer surgeon, is so revealing.
Why did he write this book, which actually had to be finished by his wife? Courage and purpose are the only reasons I can share with him. It must have been his deepest desire to beat the disease in the only way left to him.
One cannot help but recall with new meaning the Dunne poem, “Death Be Not Proud”.
A must-read along with “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande.
All I can say is that I am so glad I read this book. The world has lost a phenomenal human. It was uplifting and agonizing and revelatory to “meet” Paul, and to to agonize that my time with him was limited.
incredibly well written
This book took me by surprise. It is so well written, and medically detailed.
A health care provider, at the end of my career, I am emotionally callous.
This situation was overwhelming, broke through my barriers, and touched me. Thank you.
I felt as if I was living through this grief myself. Paul, his family, and coworkers appear so accepting of his fate, it was amazing.
I loved the title.
Very engaging
Wonderfully written, couldn’t put it down.
It was a struggle to finish it.
An incredible story of the human spirit, of an amazing human being. Gives the reader reason to treasure the good in one’s own life.
This book moved me more than I can explain. I feel like I gained insight into myself from reading this book as well as feeling inspired by this doctor, husband and father.
This book should be required reading for health care professionals!
I’ve recommended this book to my book club. The author contracted Stage IV lung cancer right on the cusp of finishing his residency in neurosurgery. His descriptions of medical school and surgical residency were very interesting to me. He faced his death heroically and wrote about it. Wrenching but inspirational.
A friend in my book club, a veterinarian, said she felt it was unethical for the author to continue doing neurosurgery when he was so terribly ill. I think she may be right. I have to admit I didn’t think of that.
I was drawn to read an end of life accounting as lived by a health care professional, experiencing the inevitable. Having witnessed countless end of life experiences myself, I needed to know this doctor’s perspective. I appreciate the extreme dedication required to put down his thoughts at a time of duress and stress. Thank you, Paul. And thank his wife for bringing his thoughts and words to all of us
Wonderful book. A must read. Poignant and haunting.