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When Breath Becomes Air: Pulitzer Prize Finalist by Paul Kalanithi, Abraham Verghese
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items A curated set of powerful medical and mortality-themed memoirs and narratives for readers moved by Paul Kalanithi's "When Breath Becomes Air." These books explore illness, the practice of medicine, meaning, and the end of life from doctors, patients,...
Start with the definitive trade paperback edition of Paul Kalanithi's memoir, which traces his journey from idealistic neurosurgeon to stage IV lung cancer patient and new father, asking what makes life worth living in the face of death. This is esse...
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Atul Gawande, a surgeon and New Yorker writer, examines how modern medicine excels at prolonging life but often fails people at the end of it, arguing that the goal should be a good life all the way to the very end. Readers who valued Kalanithi's cri...
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters
Poet Nina Riggs chronicles her life with metastatic breast cancer as a mother in her late 30s, explicitly framed as continuing the conversation Paul Kalanithi began in "When Breath Becomes Air." With vignettes that are by turns funny, furious, and te...
The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying
Oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee offers a Pulitzer Prize-winning "biography" of cancer, tracing the disease from its earliest descriptions through surgery, chemotherapy, and modern targeted therapies. For readers of Kalanithi who want a broader scient...
The Emperor of All Maladies: Cancer Bio
Julie Yip-Williams, born blind in Vietnam and later a Harvard-educated lawyer and mother of two, writes through her journey with stage IV colon cancer, turning a personal blog into a posthumously published memoir. Her account alternates between rage,...
The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir
British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh recounts decades in the operating theatre, revealing the exhilaration, failures, regrets, and ethical dilemmas of brain surgery. Readers interested in the technical and moral world Kalanithi inhabited as a neurosurgeo...
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death & Brain Surgery
ICU physician Wes Ely blends science, medical history, and patient stories to show how intensive care can both save lives and inflict long-term cognitive and psychological harm, and how his research has helped reshape ICU practice toward more humane ...
Every Deep-Drawn Breath: Critical Care Doctor
Literary critic Anatole Broyard's essays, written largely during the last 14 months of his life with metastatic prostate cancer, explore being a patient, the doctor-patient relationship, and the "style" with which one faces illness and dying. Readers...
Intoxicated by My Illness & Other Writings
Mitch Albom recounts weekly visits with his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, who is dying of ALS, turning their conversations into one final "class" on how to live and how to die. For readers of "When Breath Becomes Air" seeking a more acc...
Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man & Young Man