When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi, 2016
A neurosurgeon's memoir of literature, medicine and mortality, written as his own life was ending.
Paul Kalanithi
Kalanithi wrote most of this memoir while dying of lung cancer; it was published posthumously in 2016 and became a bestseller.
Feels like grief, wonder and hope.
What it feels like to leave a small town at escape velocity.
I knew with certainty that I would never be a doctor. I stretched out in the sun, relaxing on a desert plateau just above our house. My uncle, a doctor, like so many of my relatives, had asked me earlier that day what I planned on doing for a career, now that I was heading off to college, and the question barely registered. If you had forced me to answer, I suppose I would have said a writer, but frankly, thoughts of any career at this point seemed absurd. I was leaving this small Arizona town in a few weeks, and I felt less like someone preparing to climb a career ladder than a buzzing electron about to achieve escape velocity, flinging out into a strange and sparkling universe. Books by Paul Kalanithi
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