![]() ![]() 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. 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. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. BookPageįinalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational MemoirĪt 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.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY.NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE T his 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?.Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery Details Overlay schließen 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. 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. This is one of a handful of books I consider to be a universal donor I would recommend it to anyone, everyone.ĭr. ![]() Thanks to When Breath Becomes Air, those of us who never met Paul Kalanithi will both mourn his death and benefit from his life. Kalanithi s memoir is proof that the dying are the ones who have the most to teach us about life. Rattling, heartbreaking, and ultimately beautiful, the too-young Dr. Its only fault is that the book, like his life, ends much too early. ![]() It s unsentimental approach that makes When Breath Becomes Air so original and so devastating. is so likeable, so relatable, and so humble, that you become immersed in his world and forget where it s all heading. ![]() The narrative voice is so assured and powerful that you almost expect him to survive his own death and carry on describing what happened to his friends and family after he is gone.ĭevastating and spectacular. The book brims with insightful reflections on mortality that are especially poignant coming from a trained physician familiar with what lies ahead. delivers his chronicle in austere, beautiful prose. Paul Kalanithi s posthumous memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, possesses the gravity and wisdom of an ancient Greek tragedy. It is, despite its grim undertone, accidentally inspiring. But it s an emotional investment well worth making: a moving and thoughtful memoir of family, medicine and literature. Paul Kalanithi s memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, written as he faced a terminal cancer diagnosis, is inherently sad. And just important enough to be unmissable. As he wrote to a friend: It s just tragic enough and just imaginable enough. And part comes from the way he conveys what happened to him passionately working and striving, deferring gratification, waiting to live, learning to die so well. Part of this book s tremendous impact comes from the obvious fact that its author was such a brilliant polymath. I guarantee that finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option. ![]()
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