How We Die

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The definitive resource on perhaps the single most universal human concern: death. Even more relevant than when it was first published, this edition addresses contemporary issues in end-of-life care and includes an all-embracing and incisive afterword that examines the state of health care and our relationship with life as it approaches its terminus. How We Die also discusses how we can take control of our own final days and those of our loved ones. "Nuland's work acknowledges, with unmatched clarity, the harsh realities of how life departs… There is compassion, and often wisdom, in every page." —San Francisco Examiner

A radical revaluation of how contemporary society perceives death—and an argument for how it can make us happy. “He who would teach men to die would teach them to live,” writes Montaigne in Essais, and in How to Die: A Book about Being Alive, Ray Robertson takes up the challenge. Though contemporary society avoids the subject and often values the mere continuation of existence over its quality, Robertson argues that the active and intentional consideration of death is neither morbid nor frivolous, but instead essential to our ability to fully value life. How to Die is both an absorbing excursion through some of Western literature’s most compelling works on the subject of death as well as an anecdote-driven argument for cultivating a better understanding of death in the belief that, if we do, we’ll know more about what it means to live a meaningful life.

What happens to us as we die? Discover the answers in this exclusive 25th anniversary edition of Sherwin B Nuland’s seminal book With a foreword by Paul Kalanithi, bestselling author of When Breath Becomes Air. There are many books intended to help people deal with the trauma of bereavement, but few which explore the reality of death itself. Sherwin B. Nuland - with over thirty years' experience as a surgeon - explains in detail the processes which take place in the body and strips away many illusions about death. The result is a unique and compelling book, addressing the one final fact that all of us must confront. '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, author of Chaos

Dr. Sam Parnia faces death every day. Through his work as a critical-care doctor in a hospital emergency room, he became very interested in some of his patients’ accounts of the experiences that they had while clinically dead. He started to collect these stories and read all the latest research on the subject, and then he conducted his own experiments. That work has culminated in this extraordinary book, which picks up where Raymond Moody’s Life After Life left off. Written in a scientific, balanced, and engaging style, this is powerful and compelling reading. This fascinating and controversial book will change the way you look at death and dying.

Timeless wisdom on death and dying from the celebrated Stoic philosopher Seneca "It takes an entire lifetime to learn how to die," wrote the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC–65 AD). He counseled readers to "study death always," and took his own advice, returning to the subject again and again in all his writings, yet he never treated it in a complete work. How to Die gathers in one volume, for the first time, Seneca's remarkable meditations on death and dying. Edited and translated by James S. Romm, How to Die reveals a provocative thinker and dazzling writer who speaks with a startling frankness about the need to accept death or even, under certain conditions, to seek it out. Seneca believed that life is only a journey toward death and that one must rehearse for death throughout life. Here, he tells us how to practice for death, how to die well, and how to understand the role of a good death in a good life. He stresses the universality of death, its importance as life's final rite of passage, and its ability to liberate us from pain, slavery, or political oppression. Featuring beautifully rendered new translations, How to Die also includes an enlightening introduction, notes, the original Latin texts, and an epilogue presenting Tacitus's description of Seneca's grim suicide.

If a machine could predict how you would die, would you want to know? This is the tantalizing premise of This Is How You Die, the brilliant follow-up anthology to the self-published bestseller, Machine of Death. THIS IS HOW YOU DIE Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death The machines started popping up around the world. The offer was tempting: with a simple blood test, anyone could know how they would die. But the machines didn't give dates or specific circumstances-just a single word or phrase. DROWNED, CANCER, OLD AGE, CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN. And though the predictions were always accurate, they were also often frustratingly vague. OLD AGE, it turned out, could mean either dying of natural causes, or being shot by an elderly, bedridden man in a botched home invasion. The machines held onto that old-world sense of irony in death: you can know how it's going to happen, but you'll still be surprised when it does. This addictive anthology--sinister, witty, existential, and fascinating--collects the best of the thousands of story submissions the editors received in the wake of the success of the first volume, and exceeds the first in every way.

We have lost the ability to deal with death. Most of our friends and beloved relations will die in a busy hospital in the care of strangers, doctors and nurses they have known at best for a couple of weeks. They may not even know they are dying, victims of the kindly lie that there is still hope. They are unlikely to see even their family doctor in their final hours, robbed of their dignity and fed through a tube after a long series of excessive and hopeless medical interventions. This is the starting point of Seamus O'Mahoney's thoughtful, moving and unforgettable book on the western way of death. Dying has never been more public, with celebrities writing detailed memoirs of their illness, but in private we have done our best to banish all thought of dying and made a good death increasingly difficult to achieve.

How do we move, think and remember? Why do we get ill, age and die? Distinguished biologist Lewis Wolpert explains how cells provide the answers to the fundamental questions about our lives. Cells are the basis of all life in the universe. Our bodies are made up of billions of them: an incredibly complex society that governs everything, from movement to memory and imagination. When we age, it is because our cells slow down; when we get ill, it is because our cells mutate or stop working. In How We Live and Why We Die, Wolpert provides a clear explanation of the science that underpins our lives. He explains how our bodies function and how we derive from a single cell - the egg. He examines the science behind the topics that are much discussed but rarely understood - stem-cell research, cloning, DNA - and explains how all life evolved from just one cell. Lively and passionate, How We Live and Why We Die is an accessible guide to understanding the human body and, essentially, life itself.