How We Die: Reflections of Life's Final Chapter
by Sherwin Nuland
What’s it about: Yale School of Medicine’s Nuland’s precise description of how we die from old age, cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's, accidents, heart disease, and stroke.
Why you should read it: with effortless prose, Nuland has produced a book about death that is factual, calm and surprisingly reassuring in describing the mechanism of death. What’s the most painful way to go? Drowning.
Winner of the 1996 National Book Award for Non Fiction.
Excerpt:
"These days we don't learn about death firsthand as we did when I was a small boy, when most people died at home. Death is no longer a part of life, that old cliche, but that true cliche. Most people learn about death by reading about it in novels, going to the movies, where the patriarch lies in bed surrounded by those who love him and he gives his final blessing and says his last words, closes his eyes. . ."
Google Books version here
