How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter - Hardcover

Nuland, Sherwin B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679414614 ISBN 13: 9780679414612

Publisher: Knopf, 1994

Synopsis

Attempting to demythologize the process of dying, Nuland explores how we shall die, each of us in a way that will be unique. Through particular stories of dying--of patients, and of his own family--he examines the seven most common roads to death: old age, cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's, accidents, heart disease, and strokes, revealing the facets of death's multiplicity.

"It's impossible to read How We Die without realizing how earnestly we have avoided this most unavoidable of subjects, how we have protected ourselves by building a cultural wall of myths and lies. I don't know of any writer or scientist who has shown us the face of death as clearly, honestly and compassionately as Sherwin Nuland does here."--James Gleick
From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

About the Author

Sherwin B. Nuland teaches surgery and the history of medicine at Yale University.

From Kirkus Reviews

A sobering look at the clinical reality of death by a physician who wants it known that ``we rarely go gentle into that good night.'' Nuland (Yale Medical School; Doctors, 1988) takes the position that if we know the truth about the physical process of dying, we can rid ourselves of both our fears and our false expectations. By becoming familiar with the common patterns of illness, he says, we'll be better prepared to make appropriate decisions about continuing treatment or calling it quits. Nuland selects several common causes of death--heart attack, old age, Alzheimer's, violence, AIDS, and cancer--and, with unrelenting honesty and unsettling detail, shows precisely what happens to the body involved. His account of the decline and death of his grandmother--with whom he shared a bedroom until he was in his late teens and she in her late 90s--is unforgettable, as is his story of his well-intentioned mismanagement of the care of his older brother when he was dying of cancer. The emotional impact of these stories is quite different from that produced by the author's coldly clinical accounts (``a specific sequence of events takes place in people who bleed to death. At first, they will usually hyperventilate...''); but by demonstrating that dying is usually a messy business, Nuland succeeds in demythologizing death. His message is that the dignity we seek in dying must be found not in our final weeks, days, or moments--but in how we've lived our lives. Strong stuff: not for those who prefer to cling to comforting illusions about life's end. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0679414614
• ISBN 13: 9780679414612
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 278