Washoe County Library System

On the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. Just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. Kalanithi chronicles his transformation from a naïve medical student into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. "For readers of...

Paul Kalanithi, a young and promising neurosurgeon, received a devastating diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer at the age of thirty-six. He was a doctor treating patients one day and the next was struggling for his own life. On the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training, he decided to begin writing this book to come to terms with and give closure to his life, and to face death with courage. What makes a life worth living in the face of death?...