Here are 100 books that The Art of Dying Well fans have personally recommended if you like
The Art of Dying Well.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I am an advocate for end-of-life planning. When my dad entered his eighties, and while still raising my own children, I found myself unprepared for my father’s steady health decline. Suddenly, I was thrust into the role of overseeing his care and making hard decisions. Our difficulties were exacerbated by a western medical system that fell short to prepare us for the end of his life. After my dad’s death, I began researching end-of-life issues to educate myself and plan for my own senior years. I have a goal to support others who face losing a parent and to facilitate healing for those who have already lost one. I also strive to inform and inspire the next generation to learn and plan early to guide themselves and their families to minimize avoidable problems and enhance quality elder years.
The author, Dr. Zitter, is described as an expert on the medical experience of death and dying. Her specialties of pulmonary/critical care and palliative care brought to life the spectrum between a comfortable, natural death versus a "keep alive at all costs" mentality. This book was thoughtful and presented many sides of difficult dying experiences. I found it incredibly valuable to understand typical trajectories that might occur at the end of life from illness, organ failure, frailty, or dementia. It helped me gain clarity on my own wishes, and I encourage others to read the book and then discuss it with loved ones. Rather than it being a depressing subject matter, it has the potential to be a gift if the reader can move into a place of communicating and documenting wishes for end-of-life.
For readers of Being Mortal and Modern Death, an ICU and Palliative Care specialist offers a framework for a better way to exit life that will change our medical culture at the deepest level
In medical school, no one teaches you how to let a patient die.
Jessica Zitter became a doctor because she wanted to be a hero. She elected to specialize in critical care—to become an ICU physician—and imagined herself swooping in to rescue patients from the brink of death. But then during her first code she found herself cracking the ribs of a patient so old and…
I’m not a clinician, but friends often ask for my advice when they get sick or need help caring for a loved one. I’ve spent nearly 25 years mapping the terrain created by innovative patients, survivors, and caregivers, the rebels of medical care. I’m also a caregiver to elders. Along the way, I’ve collected books to loan when someone facing a health challenge asks me, “What do I do now?” Each of these five books was written for when you find yourself in the healthcare maze and need to borrow courage, sharpen your senses, and navigate as best you can.
My mom and I are competing to see who can give away more copies of this book; we love it that much. Both of us have been bedside caregivers for dying relatives and have seen firsthand how beautiful that process can be if people are prepared.
I love how the book is designed with nice, large print, lovely illustrations, and little snacks of insight sprinkled throughout in boxes and “fast facts.” This book is the essential What to Expect When You’re Expecting–but for death.
“A gentle, knowledgeable guide to a fate we all share” (The Washington Post): the first and only all-encompassing action plan for the end of life.
“There is nothing wrong with you for dying,” hospice physician B.J. Miller and journalist and caregiver Shoshana Berger write in A Beginner’s Guide to the End. “Our ultimate purpose here isn’t so much to help you die as it is to free up as much life as possible until you do.”
Theirs is a clear-eyed and big-hearted action plan for approaching the end of life, written to help readers feel more in control of an…
I spent nearly 30 years consulting with employers about the design and operation of the health insurance and retirement benefits they provided their workers. In my work, I was familiar with economic studies showing that workers’ wages and salaries have been increasingly skewed toward higher earners and was convinced the results were less pronounced for workers' total rewards.. In developing my analysis I came to understand that the cost of employees’ health insurance was consuming a large share of workers’ growing rewards. This led me to explore how the US health system was imposing much higher costs on workers than any other segment of society and how we might address the problem.
Dr. Puri is a specialist in palliative care for patients with terminal conditions.
She describes the challenges she has encountered during her medical training and practice in dealing with a medical establishment committed to intensive care even in the face of insurmountable odds that such care will improve patients’ health or quality of life.
She also describes encounters with patients’ families who demand intensive medical treatment and are unwilling to allow patients to transition peacefully through the end of life. Often the demand for intensive care is made without the desires of the patient being considered.
This is a poignant set of stories showing that intensive care in what is often the most expensive medical cases exact a price far higher than the dollars involved in the transaction.
"A profound exploration of what it means for all of us to live-and to die-with dignity and purpose." -People
"Visceral and lyrical." -The Atlantic
As the American born daughter of immigrants, Dr. Sunita Puri knew from a young age that the gulf between her parents' experiences and her own was impossible to bridge, save for two elements: medicine and spirituality. Between days spent waiting for her mother, an anesthesiologist, to exit the OR, and evenings spent in conversation with her parents about their faith, Puri witnessed the tension between medicine's impulse to preserve life at all costs and a spiritual…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I am an advocate for end-of-life planning. When my dad entered his eighties, and while still raising my own children, I found myself unprepared for my father’s steady health decline. Suddenly, I was thrust into the role of overseeing his care and making hard decisions. Our difficulties were exacerbated by a western medical system that fell short to prepare us for the end of his life. After my dad’s death, I began researching end-of-life issues to educate myself and plan for my own senior years. I have a goal to support others who face losing a parent and to facilitate healing for those who have already lost one. I also strive to inform and inspire the next generation to learn and plan early to guide themselves and their families to minimize avoidable problems and enhance quality elder years.
A fast read (just 100 pages) about an important concept of having conversations with your elderly parents sooner than later. The author talks about why we avoid uncomfortable conversations and why you should have them anyway. Denial that everything is fine is not helpful as your parent's age. When you are under duress or grief stricken, the opportunity to talk may have passed. Marcus suggests that sometimes your parents might just be waiting for someone to ask them questions.
The author then goes on to discuss how to have tough conversations. I appreciated her advice of injecting some humor to help mitigate the fear. Other great ideas were to bring in a third party to neutralize challenging family dynamics, starting with easier topics first and then gradually adding on subjects over time, and using someone else's life as an example. The author then wraps up with what you should talk…
Is it time to have a CONVERSATION with your aging parent? Nobody likes having difficult conversations. In fact, most of us avoid them. If you are faced with having a conversation about aging with your parents, this book is for you. Avoiding the conversation and not planning for the future of your aging parents will only cost them (and you) more in the long-run. The financial and emotional expense of waiting to discuss and develop a plan of action can take a heavy toll on bank accounts and family relationships. This book can help you: • understand the importance of…
My first memory is of my father telling me about the cosmos, the Big Bang, and how the sun would burn out one day, expanding so big it would swallow the Earth. This memory haunted my dreams and waking hours, instilling a fascination with the life and death cycles of everything. Now I’m an artist, writer, educator and somatic coach devoted to helping people talk about and honor the things western culture doesn’t create space for–big emotions, messy love and the gifts of dying.
The poetics of this book, mixed with its vital and necessary information about being with death, broke my heart at least once a page, often more. I believe that every time your heart breaks, you build a necessary resilience for staying alive.
By the end of the book, all the pieces of my heart had somehow been mended, leaving me with a new understanding of what being alive is about. In the months leading up to my grandmother’s death, I returned to this book many times, and it helped me give her a beautiful death in her home, just as she longed for. Every person who is going to die and loves someone who will die needs this book.
Award-winning writer and nurse Sallie Tisdale offers a lyrical, thought-provoking yet practical perspective on death and dying in this frank, direct and compassionate meditation on the inevitable. _______________________________________
From the sublime to the ridiculous, Tisdale leads the reader through the peaks and troughs of death with a calm, wise and humorous hand. More than a how-to manual or a spiritual bible, this is a graceful compilation of honest and intimate anecdotes based on the deaths Tisdale has witnessed in her work and life, as well as stories from cultures, traditions and literature around the world.
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 love this book because it’s a pure and simple description of the physical reasons our lives end. I don’t believe anyone has ever brought death down to earth like Dr. Nuland.
I liked his book so much that I arranged to meet with him. I found him to be the same clear and compassionate person (and doctor) who appears on every page of his book.
What I admire the most is how he manages to describe some of the deadliest human diseases from the inside out, writing so clearly that readers can relax into understanding and let go of their worries without thinking.
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…
Four years old and homeless, William Walters boarded one of the last American Orphan Trains in 1930 and embarked on an astonishing quest through nine decades of U.S. and world history.
For 75 years, the Orphan Trains had transported 250,000 children from the streets and orphanages of the East Coast…
To care for the dying is not only strenuous physically, emotionally, and spiritually, but it is a challenge in self-care and a constant call to remain non-judgmental. As someone who struggled financially as a single mother for many years, I discovered that compassion and empathy were needed not only for my children but also myself—indeed self-love was at the core of all. Working with the elderly in residential care, in hospice, and with individuals and families I now teach community deathcare with an edge of social activism to help the vulnerable feel safe while living and while dying.
This book rattled and awakened me in a place that seemed taboo to tickle. Studying death and dying can be driven by ego (what are you going to wear at your funeral? Do you have your music picked out?) Not to say there is not some good in the ego-driven work-- contemplating that can be done no matter what angle you study. However, Being With Dying cuts to the chase. If you feel ready to dismantle your illusion of living forever (or, if think that you’ll only die on your own terms, but only when you’re ready) this book is for you.
A Buddhist teacher draws from her years of experience in caring for the dying to provide inspiring lessons on how to face death with courage and compassion
The Buddhist approach to death can be of great benefit to people of all backgrounds—as has been demonstrated by Joan Halifax’s decades of work with the dying and their caregivers. A Zen priest and a world-renowned pioneer in care of the dying, Halifax has helped countless people face death with courage and trained caregivers in compassioante end-of-life care.
In this book, Halifax offers lessons from dying people and caregivers, as well as guided…
I earned a Ph.D. in Modern Thought from Stanford and have been an award-winning professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for over three decades. I've also lived with Crohn’s Disease for more than 50 years. At the intersection of these two experiences, I developed a therapeutic practice oriented towards those with chronic and life-threatening illnesses called Healing Counsel. As both a teacher and a counsellor, I ask people to reconsider the ways they make sense of their experiences. I try to assist people to open up new possibilities for healing, not only as individuals, but also as societies, maybe even as a species, or perhaps even as planetary beings.
Many people imagine that healing and dying are antithetical. However, this is not necessarily so. Sometimes, in the right circumstances, death can be healing not just for the person whose life is ending but for those who love them.
Unfortunately, American hospital care does not usually facilitate such graceful transitions. Kaufman, a medical anthropologist, compiles case histories of end-of-life care in medical facilities in order to help us understand the complexities that face us in these contexts. Since most Americans now die in some kind of medical institution, this book should be required reading for everyone—before it happens to us.
Over the past thirty years, the way Americans experience death has been dramatically altered. The advent of medical technology capable of sustaining life without restoring health has changed where, when, and how we die. In this revelatory study, medical anthropologist Sharon R. Kaufman examines the powerful center of those changes: the hospital, where most Americans die today. She deftly links the experiences of patients and families, the work of hospital staff, and the ramifications of institutional bureaucracy to show the invisible power of the hospital system in shaping death and our individual experience of it. In doing so, Kaufman also…
My mother’s death from an E. coli outbreak over a decade ago was my wake-up call to an awareness of my own mortality and was the emotional foundation of both my first novel and my latest. I’ve reached a point in my own life where advancing age is a lived experience, and I’ve read broadly about this phase of life that goes largely unexamined despite the fact that we’re all destined for it. My essays have appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News. I’m a graduate of Denison University and Columbia Law School.
I first read this book not long after my mother passed away, and its argument against the over-medicalization of death and dying resonated powerfully with me since she died after spending her last weeks in a hospital. It revisits Ernest Becker's insight in a different way, that rather than treating death and dying as something that can be “fixed,” we need to acknowledge and embrace the end to give greater meaning to what leads up to it.
A Columbia University physician comes across a popular medieval text on dying well written after the horror of the Black Plague and discovers ancient wisdom for rethinking death and gaining insight today on how we can learn the lost art of dying well in this wise, clear-eyed book that is as compelling and soulful as Being Mortal, When Breath Becomes Air, and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.
As a specialist in both medical ethics and the treatment of older patients, Dr. L. S. Dugdale knows a great deal about the end of life. Far too many of us die poorly,…
What happens when a novelist with a “razor-sharp wit” (Newsday), a “singular sensibility” (Huff Post), and a lifetime of fear about getting sick finds a lump where no lump should be? Months of medical mishaps, coded language, and Doctors who don't get it.
With wisdom, self-effacing wit, and the story-telling…
I am passionate about writing books that put good into the world and highlight meaningful and inspiring themes, which, in turn, means I am also passionate about reading books that do the same. I love to write and read books that leave the reader feeling like there is still good in the world, even when it seems to be very dark around us. If people read my books or any on this list, I sincerely hope they feel encouraged and inspired and enjoy them as much as I do.
I recommend this book only if you like to cry – but like… the good kind of crying. It’s a raw and emotional fiction story about dealing with the grief of losing a spouse, and it is incredibly well-written. I had no idea what I was getting myself into the first time I picked up this book, but I greatly enjoyed the emotional roller coaster.
Whenever people ask me for a book recommendation that will emotionally challenge them, I always recommend this one.
They used to joke about it. Like many brilliant scientists, Josh sometimes had trouble remembering things that needed doing in the “real” world—like buying groceries, eating regular meals, and talking to people. But he was happy to have his beloved wife, Lauren, remind him with her “honey do” lists. He just never realized how much he would need one when she was gone.
Being a widower is not something Joshua Park ever expected. Given his solitary job, small circle of friends and family, and the social awkwardness he’s always suffered from, Josh has no idea how to negotiate this new,…
