When Breath Becomes Air

"That tumultuous turning point is what neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi chronicles in When Breath Becomes Air, also among the year’s best science books — his piercing memoir of being diagnosed with terminal cancer at the peak of a career bursting with potential and a life exploding with aliveness."

"Partway between Montaigne and Oliver Sacks , Kalanithi weaves together philosophical reflections on his personal journey with stories of his patients to illuminate the only thing we have in common — our mortality — and how it spurs all of us, in ways both minute and monumental, to pursue a life of meaning."

"Yes, he was a very ambitious neurosurgeon. This is the book I’ve read most recently, and I must admit that it moved me, especially since I have a friend who is in a similar situation. What I was fascinated by was the dual perspective, where he’s both a patient and a doctor. And even though he’s a doctor, he’s just as vulnerable when he gets the disease. He’s a human being, just like everybody else—but he sees it through his professional eyes. He views himself as a patient in this medical system, which he is also representing, and he explains how he struggles with the different roles. Indirectly, he shows us how difficult it must be for patients without the professional perspective to understand and fit into this system of medical practice. Kalanithi explains, for example, how even though he’s a surgeon himself, his opinion is sometimes ignored by doctors. Of course, a lot of patients feel that the system is not listening to what they have to say, and this book makes you really think about how the medical system works. It’s also a very moving story—about family and disappointments in life and the silver linings. Kalanithi makes a poignant joke, ‘How do you save your marriage? You get a terminal cancer diagnosis.’ Sadly, he wasn’t able to finish his book, and it ends with an epilogue by his wife who describes the aftermath and shares the story about the daughter they had a few years before he died."

"Neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi received a diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer when he was just 36. He had less than two years to live, and in that time he had a baby girl with his wife — and he wrote this book. When Breath Becomes Air is about facing death, but, oh, what life bursts from its pages. Profound and moving, it is a gift."

"those two continue to haunt me with their humanity and their moral challenge to be good, in the big and small acts of life."

"When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi, The Light of the World, by Elizabeth Alexander, and Notes on Grief, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, helped me metabolize my own experience."

"Its exploration of mortality begins as clinical and philosophical and ends in such a simple, lovely place of acceptance despite the inability to understand."