Currently reading
Hieroglyph: Stories and Blueprints for a Better Future
Ukraine: Zbig's Grand Chessboard & How the West Was Checkmated
The Girl on the Train: A Novel
Our Souls at Night: A novel
Above the Waterfall
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction
The Homicide Report: Understanding Murder in America
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
The Gods of Mars
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
(Added a link - 4/18/15 - at bottom)Being Mortal is completely irrelevant for any readers who do not have elderly relations, do not know anyone who is old or in failing health, and do not themselves expect to become old. Otherwise, this is must-read stuff. Life may be a journey, but all our roads, however long or short, whether express, local or HOV, whether traversed by foot, burro, bus, SUV, monster truck or Star Trek transporter, converge on the same destination, and the quality of those last few miles is something we should all be concerned about.In the past few decades, medical science has rendered obsolete centuries of experience, tradition, and language about our mortality and created a new difficulty for mankind: how to die.
Atul Gawande, as a doctor, has had considerable exposure to issues of death and dying, but when his father was diagnosed with brain cancer, Gawande was motivated to look into how end of life care was being handled across the board. Being Mortal is the distillation of what he learned.Old age is not a battle. Old age is a massacre.
Atul Gawande - photo by Aubrey Calo