Synopsis
In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.
Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.
Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end.
About Atul Gawande
See more books from this AuthorBy confronting the reality rather than pretending it can be beaten...the medical establishment can offer the kind of compassion that allows for more humane ways to die. As Gawande reminds readers, “endings matter.” A sensitive, intelligent and heartfelt examination of the processes of aging and dying.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh... | See more reviews from KirkusGawande identifies no perfect solutions to the problems inherent in bodily decline. He is just asking us to commit ourselves to creating better options and making choices with the goal of a purposeful life in mind.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh... | See more reviews from NY Times“Being Mortal” uses a clear, illuminating style to describe the medical facts and cases that have brought him to that understanding.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh... | See more reviews from NY TimesThis book is an acknowledgment that serenity and well-being actually cannot be dished up cafeteria-style — and that sometimes the only sure way to gain control is first to relinquish it, whether to a bad disease, a dying patient or the constraints of a finite life span.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh... | See more reviews from NY Times...Gawande is rightly scathing about a system that exists largely as a form of containment, where the temptation is to deal with people as if they are inconvenient.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh... | See more reviews from GuardianThe message resounding through Being Mortal is that our lives have narrative – we all want to be the authors of our own stories, and in stories endings matter.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh... | See more reviews from GuardianNeither hospice nor palliative care are new concepts on the horizon of medical care, yet Dr. Gawande’s astute presentation of an argument in favor of patient wellbeing is food for thought...for all of us who inevitably face the time when we will be making our own decisions regarding end-of-life issues and/or decisions for our loved ones.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh... | See more reviews from NY Journal of BooksBalancing well-crafted research with insightful windows into the human dimension, Gawande comes up with an analysis that is both thought-provoking and wonderfully written...
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh... | See more reviews from Blog Critics“Being Mortal” doesn’t gloss over what awaits us all, but it fixes our attention on the ways in which a patient’s wishes might be fulfilled...
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh... | See more reviews from WSJ onlineAll of this is so profoundly sensible that you begin to wonder who could possibly disagree. The answer is, more or less, no one.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh... | See more reviews from Globe and MailIn this eloquent, moving book Atul Gawande, a general surgeon and author of other thoughtful works on the doctor’s trade, explains how and why modern medicine has turned the end of life into something so horrible.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh... | See more reviews from The EconomistThis humane and beautifully written book is a manifesto that could radically improve the lives of the aged and terminally ill.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh......is his best and most personal book yet — though a little depressing, until you get to the parakeets.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...Nothing short of a manifesto, Gawande’s book should be on the shelf of every health care professional as well as required reading for anyone—which is to say, most of us—facing the prospect of providing for an aging family member.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh......what comes through clearly and most convincingly in “Being Mortal” is the absolute importance of taking one’s head out of the sand when it comes to the inevitable. To die a good death means finding, in life, the courage to have caring and frequent conversations with family members and health care providers.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...Being Mortal seems to me particularly valuable precisely because these thoughts and conversations are so difficult.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...Gawande's own experience with his father, whose illness brought the author face to face with many of the same scenarios encountered by the patients he talks about in the book, culminates in a haunting epilogue...
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...Many skilled clinicians, trained to fix purely medical problems, will find have difficulty focusing on the human needs of their patients and helping them confront mortality...This book is an eloquent, heartfelt cry for change. We can only hope it opens a few eyes.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...Gawande performs admirably in presenting patient vignettes — including an account of his septuagenarian father’s last days — in finely nuanced detail, tracing hopes and dashed expectations as each moves toward the end.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...I think if you’re a caretaker for an elderly relative or if you ever plan on growing old yourself and want to maintain quality of life, this book is an absolute must-read. For you, “Being Mortal” is informative to the end.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...Gawande posits the idea that a life worth living can be created for all stages of life. The job of medicine is not merely to ensure health and survival, but to enable wellbeing. He asks us to have the courage to confront our mortality, to be more honest about our limits...Gawande makes reading about death easy.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...This is the language of hospice, which is not necessarily an institution but more a humane way of death. That, says Gawande, is what truly empowers patients. No book has all the answers, but Being Mortal should help to start some conversations.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...Being Mortal offers valuable insights about the continuum of care options in the final stages of aging. Gawande has helped me prepare for the ways in which the glide-path of aging eventually turns to a steep decline, and how to think about the difficult choices...
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...I think if you’re a caretaker for an elderly relative or if you ever plan on growing old yourself and want to maintain quality of life, this book is an absolute must-read. For you, “Being Mortal” is informative to the end.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...In this book, Gawande is able to build a narrative through the collection of experiences that leads to the conclusion that as we perceive ourselves as closer to death, our thoughts on mortality transform our goals and values to that of simpler things.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...Much of the book’s value is in its very existence. It gives us a place from which to continue the discussion. Also valuable are the many anecdotes Gawande gives us — stories of people who are making a difference, either by their own examples or in their groundbreaking entrepreneurial efforts.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...I think if you're a caretaker for an elderly relative or if you ever plan on growing old yourself and want to maintain quality of life, this book is an absolute must-read. For you, "Being Mortal" is informative to the end.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End is a gorgeously written, thoughtful, and heartbreaking book that should be required reading. Gawande manages to discuss some very difficult and provocative subjects while still maintaining a clear-eyed and gripping narrative.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...As I read Being Mortal, I learned a lot: not only about the challenges and realities of old age and terminal illness, but also about the importance of gerontology and palliative care and the specialised, contextual knowledge they use to help patients. I’ll be surprised if I read a better work of non-fiction this year.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...Being Mortal is richly told. Gawanda follows the lives and paths of a number of individuals, including his own father, as they come to grips with aging or fatal illnesses. It's the kind of book that will have you nodding your head, and it should make a big difference in the national conversation about end times.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...I can't say that there is much that is upbeat about this book, but it is beautifully and compassionately written and easy to understand. I enjoyed the personal stories about from the author's family and practice as a Boston surgeon. An important book for end of life decision making.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...We all have individual needs and expectations for what our lives will look like as we age, and the only way to honor them is to truly listen. This book is a great way to start those conversations.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...Dying is part of all of our stories, but we have become increasingly uncomfortable discussing it. Gawande stresses that although we have learned how to live longer, we must relearn how to die.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...I’ve become very picky about the books I keep these days and will be adding Being Mortal to my permanent shelves. If you haven’t read this book yet, I urge you to do so.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...Thanks to Dr. Gawande, we now have answers to many of our questions, and we are better equipped to assist those we care about to feel more at ease as they continue on toward the next phase of their lives.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...This is not an easy choice to make — for those unwell or their families. But given the fact of our mortality and the limits of medicine, it is a choice that many have had to make and will have to make.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...So much in Being Mortal is not only great writing but conversations that we should be having, in our families, our communities, and society.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...Few of us are prepared for the end of life when it arrives. Being Mortal proposes that we should be ready to make a choice...Being Mortal was an interesting book and well worth reading.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...Atul Gawande’s “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End” is a book with heart, and it attempts to share that heart with those who read it.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...It’s fascinating reading from Gawande that definitely goes way beyond the idea of a doctor and the medical community as simply being there to try to fix a health problem. Great book, highly recommended.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...A page-turning, beautiful, important book that won’t take you long to read but will empower you and give you much to think about. Highly recommended.
Read Full Review of Being Mortal: Medicine and Wh...As tough as the subject of this book is, it was a very good: the writing is not dry. And because he uses stories about his own family members as well as some stories of his patients, Gawande is constantly providing context to his points about how to lead a meaningful life while you are dying.
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