End of Life Reading List

Personal Effects is an unsparing, up-close look at the difficult work Jensen does behind the yellow tape and the lessons he learned there...

One of the most important psychological studies of the late twentieth century, On Death and Dying grew out of Dr. Kübler-Ross’s famous interdisciplinary seminar on death, life, and transition...

A Heart That Works is Delaney’s intimate, unflinching, and fiercely funny exploration of what happened...

Extreme Measures charts Zitter’s journey from wanting to be one kind of hero to becoming another—a doctor who prioritizes the patient’s values and preferences in an environment where the default choice is the extreme use of technology...

“Julie Yip-Williams lived a life defined by effort and incredible self-reliance. But in this searing memoir of increasing vulnerability, she dismantles and then reconstructs what it means to be triumphant...

This powerful memoir by New York Times bestselling author Amy Bloom is an illuminating story of two people whose love leads them to find a courageous way to part--and of a woman's struggle to go forward in the face of loss...

It started with an itch - first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue...

Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein. She’s on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement...

The last class of my old professor’s life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves...

The death of a child, writes Myra Bluebond-Langner, poignantly underlines the impact of social and cultural factors on the way that we die and the way that we permit others to die...

Kate Bowler believed that life was a series of unlimited choices, until she discovered, at age 35, that her body was wracked with cancer...

Thirty-five-year-old Kate Bowler was a professor at the school of divinity at Duke, and had finally had a baby with her childhood sweetheart after years of trying, when she began to feel jabbing pains in her stomach...

The Art of Dying Well is about living as well as possible for as long as possible and adapting successfully to change...

“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...

As a hospice chaplain, Kerry Egan didn’t offer sermons or prayers, unless they were requested; in fact, she found, the dying rarely want to talk about God, at least not overtly...

Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families...

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present?...

An exquisite memoir about how to live--and love--every day with "death in the room," from poet Nina Riggs...