Why am I passionate about this?
I’m a psychiatry professor, researcher, and author at Stanford University. Besides OCD, my research has focused on the interface between technology and psychology, both in its negative manifestations (e.g., video game addiction, online narcissism, cyberbullying) and positive applications (e.g., telemedicine, virtual reality therapy, AI digital therapeutics). My reading tastes and non-scientific writing topics reflect the same interests—deep and highly personal psychological explorations of individuals on a quest for meaning or facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles, symptoms, or character tests.
Elias' book list on the psychological quest for meaning
Why did Elias love this book?
It is unfortunately routine for a thirty-five-year-old neurosurgeon to encounter the death of a patient from an aggressive brain tumor, but it is utterly unexpected for him to have to confront it in the mirror after being diagnosed with disseminated lung cancer himself at an impossibly young age.
Written on borrowed time and in the shadow of his impending demise, this memoir is a profound reflection on life, loss, the meaning of things, and what really matters in the end.
10 authors picked When Breath Becomes Air as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
**THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER**
'Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.' Atul Gawande, bestselling author of Being Mortal
What makes life worth living in the face of death?
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live.
When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity - the brain - and…