How We Die Reflections on Life's Final Chapter, New Edition

by NULAND, SHERWIN B.

• ISBN13: 9780679742449
• ISBN10: 0679742441
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-01-15
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

Attempting to demythologize the process of dying, Nuland explores how we shall die, each of us in a way that will be unique. Through particular stories of dying--of patients, and of his own family--he examines the seven most common roads to death: old age, cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's, accidents, heart disease, and strokes, revealing the facets of death's multiplicity. "It's impossible to readHow We Diewithout realizing how earnestly we have avoided this most unavoidable of subjects, how we have protected ourselves by building a cultural wall of myths and lies. I don't know of any writer or scientist who has shown us the face of death as clearly, honestly and compassionately as Sherwin Nuland does here."--James Gleick

Author Biography

Sherwin B. Nuland, MD, was Clinical Professor of Surgery at Yale University until his retirement in 2009, though he continues to teach Biomedical Ethics and Medical History to Yale undergraduates, and serve the university in various capacities.  He won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Book Critics Circle Award when this book was initially published.  In hardcover and paperback, How We Die was on the New York Times bestseller list for a total of thirty-four weeks, and has been translated into twenty-nine languages.  Dr. Nuland and his family live in Connecticut.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Strangled Heart	p. 3
A Valentine - and How It Fails	p. 20
Three Score and Ten	p. 43
Doors to Death of the Aged	p. 64
Alzheimer's Disease	p. 89
Murder and Serenity	p. 118
Accidents, Suicide, and Euthanasia	p. 140
A Story of AIDS	p. 163
The Life of a Virus and The Death of a Man	p. 180
The Malevolence of Cancer	p. 202
Hope and the Cancer Patient	p. 222
The Lessons Learned	p. 242
Epilogue	p. 263
Index	p. 271
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