Being Mortal

Being Mortal

By Atul Gawande
$19.99
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“American medicine, Being Mortal reminds us, has prepared itself for life but not for death. This is Atul Gawande’s most powerful—and moving—book.”

Malcolm Gladwell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of David and Goliath

An Amazon Best Book of the Month selection

Finalist for the 2015 Audie Award for Best Nonfiction Narration

A #1 New York Times bestseller

A #1 Amazon.com bestseller in Health Care Delivery

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

#1 New York Times Bestseller In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering. Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified. Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life—all the way to the very end.