100 books like How We Die

As a busy businesswoman and coach, I felt like I had always been pushing for what I thought represented success, racing from task to task, project to project almost without stopping to take a breath. Eventually that caught up with me and I found myself feeling over-stressed and unfulfilled. This was the catalyst that ignited a need to make some changes in my own life. I read these books to both learn and heal myself. They are all now books I refer to–to keep focused on a more mindful way of being and maintain my own self -awareness. 

I saved many lives as a doctor working in the hospital, the ER, and the ICU. But the people whose lives I couldn’t save fascinated me the most. Many of them found a place of peace, healing, and profound knowledge before they died. This made me question what I learned in medical training. I loved science but knew there was something beyond what we could see and measure. I wasn’t religious, but I could sense some kind of ultimate and eternal love just beyond our grasp, creating and maintaining everything. I adore books that capture this sense of radical love and show us who we really are—so we can discover it today.

I am a University Distinguished Professor at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, and a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. I have devoted my career to studying service quality and ways to improve it, first in the commercial sector and, since 2001, in healthcare. I started my healthcare journey studying at the Mayo Clinic, and I have since done in-residence research at other health systems, most recently, Henry Ford Health in Detroit. My work includes research on improving the patient and family experience in cancer care. Kindness and dignity are vitally important in healthcare – and too often missing. I am on a personal mission to enhance healing in all its forms.

I am a University Distinguished Professor at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, and a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. I have devoted my career to studying service quality and ways to improve it, first in the commercial sector and, since 2001, in healthcare. I started my healthcare journey studying at the Mayo Clinic, and I have since done in-residence research at other health systems, most recently, Henry Ford Health in Detroit. My work includes research on improving the patient and family experience in cancer care. Kindness and dignity are vitally important in healthcare – and too often missing. I am on a personal mission to enhance healing in all its forms.

As a cancer doctor, I have spent two decades dedicated to understanding the causes and therapy of cancer, how my patients experience their diagnosis and treatment, and how meaningful improvements in their experience should be reflected in the criteria we use to approve cancer drugs approval in the U.S., to improve their lives. In over 100 essays published in outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post and in two books, I sing the stories of my patients as I learn from their undaunted spirits and their utter humanity, as I try to figure out how to be a better doctor, and a better person.

As a physician, I have been in innumerable situations where people and their loved ones were facing off a serious illness but felt like they were completely lost. The reality of the end of life is nothing like how we have experienced it throughout our history. I have written about end-of-life care for the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Atlantic amongst others, but felt that this was such an important and vast issue that it deserved a deeper dive. My research also focuses on end-of-life care and I was able to weave a story presented through stories, historical texts, and research papers in a way that readers will feel like they have a map of just how life and death have evolved with scientific advances and a changing society. It doesn’t hurt that I trained at Harvard Medical School and Duke University, providing me the best environments to shape my views and perspective.

When my mother enrolled in hospice after years of living with cancer, the nurse asked her: Do you want to know what will happen to your body as it starts shutting down? That was the first time anyone talked with us about the dying process. The question came as an immense relief, eventually inspiring this book. After witnessing the difficulties and surprising joys of my mother’s dying experience, I began hospice volunteering. Later, I spent three intensive stints volunteering at San Francisco’s Zen Hospice Project. And as a former journalist and associate professor of English, I began researching and interviewing experts. Their deep caring and knowledge inform this book.

When my mother enrolled in hospice after years of living with cancer, the nurse asked her: Do you want to know what will happen to your body as it starts shutting down? That was the first time anyone talked with us about the dying process. The question came as an immense relief, eventually inspiring this book. After witnessing the difficulties and surprising joys of my mother’s dying experience, I began hospice volunteering. Later, I spent three intensive stints volunteering at San Francisco’s Zen Hospice Project. And as a former journalist and associate professor of English, I began researching and interviewing experts. Their deep caring and knowledge inform this book.

When my mother enrolled in hospice after years of living with cancer, the nurse asked her: Do you want to know what will happen to your body as it starts shutting down? That was the first time anyone talked with us about the dying process. The question came as an immense relief, eventually inspiring this book. After witnessing the difficulties and surprising joys of my mother’s dying experience, I began hospice volunteering. Later, I spent three intensive stints volunteering at San Francisco’s Zen Hospice Project. And as a former journalist and associate professor of English, I began researching and interviewing experts. Their deep caring and knowledge inform this book.

I’ve been a free spirit since I was born, but as an adolescent I got trapped by diet culture and believed I needed to change my body. I struggled for six years with an eating disorder and my sister Stephanie died at age 36 from faulty breast implants and malnutrition. Because of these experiences, and wanting my baby daughter to grow up staying lovingly connected to her body (she has!), I created The Body Positive, a nonprofit that has freed millions of people to love and respect their precious bodies. I’m now a full-fledged Wild Woman teaching and freeing other aging women to connect to their soul’s innate wisdom.