When Breath Becomes Air (the Ultimate Moving Life-and-death Story)

By (author) Paul Kalanithi; By (author) Kalanithi Paul
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When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi''s transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity - the brain - and finally into a patient and a new father.

What makes life worth living in the face of death?
Description:

**THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER**

''Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.'' Atul Gawande, bestselling author of Being Mortal

What makes life worth living in the face of death?

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade''s training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live.

When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi''s transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity - the brain - and finally into a patient and a new father.

Paul Kalanithi died while working on this profoundly moving book, yet his words live on as a guide to us all. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.

''A vital book about dying. Awe-inspiring and exquisite. Obligatory reading for the living'' Nigella Lawson

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A vital book about dying. Awe-inspiring and exquisite. Obligatory reading for the living.
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Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.
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A great, indelible book ... as intimate and illuminating as Atul Gawande’s “Being Mortal,” to cite only one recent example of a doctor’s book that has had exceptionally wide appeal ... I guarantee that finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option ... gripping from the start ... None of it is maudlin. Nothing is exaggerated. As he wrote to a friend: “It’s just tragic enough and just imaginable enough.” And just important enough to be unmissable.
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Powerful and poignant.
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Less a memoir than a reflection on life and purpose… A vital book.
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Extraordinary...Remarkable... luminous, revelatory memoir about mortality and what makes being alive meaningful ... Lyrical, intimate, insistent and profound. Kalanithi had the mind of the polymath and the ear of a poet.
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Powerful and poignant… Elegantly written posthumous memoir… Should be compulsory for anyone who intends to be a doctor… A profound reflection on the meaning of life.
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A stark, fascinating, well-written and heroic memoir.
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Exceptional.
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When I came to the end of the last flawless paragraph of When Breath Becomes Air, all I could do was turn to the first page and read the whole thing again. Searingly intelligent, beautifully written, and beyond brave, I haven''t been so marked by a book in years.
Biographical note:

PAUL KALANITHI was a neurosurgeon and writer. He held degrees in English literature, human biology, and history and philoso­phy of science and medicine from Stanford and Cambridge universities before graduating from Yale School of Medicine. He also received the American Academy of Neu­rological Surgery’s highest award for research.

His reflections on doctoring and illness have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Paris Review Daily.

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