How We Die

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Summary: This book changed my life.
Review: Nuland brilliantly illustrates that death is a natural part of life -- the last part. Sensitively and humanely, he conveys that death is inevitable. Inevitable. Because of this book, I live my life in a more genuine, active way. That's a wonderful gift.

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Summary: Chapter on Alzheimer's particularly helpful
Review: The author is a surgeon and teacher of medicine and writes that we have sterilized death by removing it from homes and family. He takes the reader through the process of how illness and trauma kills. And so his stories are not just about why someone dies, but how they die and what they physically go through during the last moments. The portraits of death he offers range from heart disease to murder. His chapter on Alzheimer's Disease was particularly helpful to me and the way in which he de-mystifies death through the telling of the stories in this book really did help dissipate some of the innate fear I have about facing my husband Tom's death and my own.

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Summary: Also excellent review on the mealing of life
Review: Actually ,what I've read was a Chinese translation,for about three years ago,which reinforced me about the meaning of what I Have been doing ,while I was just finished my eager intership in TSGH in Taiwan and preparing graduation from the medical school.Death ,in different ways ,pointed the ending of both individuals and the total human populations ,in spite of our effort as mechanical ventilation, advanced antibiotics ,and video-tape guided endoscopic surgery.However ,it's worthy ,for we finally admit the value of life and living, in spite of in front of the death(Thanks for your tolerance of my Chinese English)

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Summary: A book for Enlightened Individuals
Review: Dr. Nuland provides a very through, comprehensive and enlightening description of a very taboo topic. He has used terms and descriptive language that is understandable by people who don't understand the medical lingo.
Unlike some of the other books I have read on the topic, this books explains the issues of interest in scientific form, that are easily understable and cover a wider range of topics than the ordinary topics affiliated with this taboo topic.
I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to anyone who is interested to be more enlightened and open-minded.

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Summary: An excellent book
Review: I found Dr. Nuland's honest and straightforward examination of death and dying to be incredibly enlightening. It is rare in our society to engage in an open discussion about the last chapter of life. Indeed we often try to avoid the mere mention of death out of fear, superstition, or ignorance. Dr. Nuland, in a clear and concise style (even for the layperson such as myself), approaches this "taboo" topic and explores the questions we have often asked ourselves but have not been able to ask others. My sincere thanks to Dr. Nuland.

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Summary: This book is way over rated
Review: This book is terribly disorganized, leaping back and forth, repetitive in many details, laden with anecdotes totally unrelated to the subject. It offers a few first-hand accounts on the fact of death in medical facility, which are detailed and revealing; but then it rambles on with less and less scientific backing, for instance, about why sometimes people feel tranquility in their last moments. There are stories that can fit in one page that stretch into chapters. The book becomes really boring after the first chapter

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Summary: Hard-hitting, realistic look at a difficult subject.
Review: Dr. Nuland manages to de-romanticize a phase which we will all pass through, without becoming overly morbid. Death is a subject which we would all rather avoid; Dr. Nuland intelligently and interestingly, correlates the choices we make in life with "how" we will eventually die. The ultimate effect, for me, was to change the way I was living

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Summary: A remarkably informative and moving book
Review: On the day my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I bought "How We Die" and read it on the plane home. This book not only helped me to understand the medical process that my father was enduring, but the emotional process, as well. Dr. Nuland's book helped me make sense of the incomprehensible reality of death and dying, and I have passed it along to many people who have found themselves in similarly troubling situations. It is not an easy read; I cannot imagine getting through it without being emotionally overwhelmed from time to time (the chapters on Alzheimer's and AIDS are particularly poignant). You will shed tears, but it is well worth it.

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Summary: The truth about death, with compassion!
Review: Face it folks, we are NOT going to get out of this life alive!! Dr. Nuland gives us a compassionate look at what is in store for us all eventually and gives us a realistic view of of how our bodies will "shut down" when the time comes. This book takes away the fear of the unknown and gives us all the information we need without all the technical jargon that Doctors throw at us when we ask questions. With the fear gone, Dr. Nuland gives hope to those with a loved one (or themselves) of how certain things will occur when it is "our time" to meet our maker. An excellent book for the common folks or the professionals.

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Summary: Romantic notions of death are dispelled by the reality
Review: I've been reading a sobermindedly frank book. It's titled, How We Die, a National Book Award winner by Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland. Already, I sense people skipping on to other things. Why would a deliriously fun-filled guy like me be reading a book like this? You got me. Maybe it's because I want to know how people die. And why not? A person doesn't have to be a morbid ghoul to be curious about that, does he? More specifically, I guess I want to know how I will one day die. Will I be borne aloft on the wings of my guardian angel, accompanied by choirs of cherubim and seraphim--bells joyously pealing in the background? Perhaps my fate will be the other extreme. Maybe I'll plunge through a suddenly opened crack in the earth, fiendishly pitch-forked in the rear all the way down to some fiery terminal of woe. Of course, cracks do open up in the earth on occasion, and people and things do tumble down, but I don't think it has anything to do with deserved retribution. Nevertheless, that possibility seems more likely than the angel and bells scenario. In his book about death, Dr. Nuland discounts both these romantic exits, glorious or demonic though may be. He takes a much more realistically blunt attitude toward death. Despite the fanciful Victorian perception that death is a somehow uplifting affair, oftentimes cleansing body and soul, his experience as a medical doctor is to the contrary. He has found that the vast majority of us will find the process an agonizing and grim affair. Nuland tells the explicit and none-too-reassuring details of how people die of heart disease, cancer, AIDS, severe trauma, alzheimers, and just plain wearing out. He says that very old people are usually dying of many things--it's just a matter of which disease slams down the coffin lid first. Sure, he says, some of us are lucky enough to proverbially die in our sleep, but that's relatively few. Most of us will feel the torment of death's grip, and it won't be pleasant for either us or our loved ones. Nuland himself was awakened to the career-long prospects of grim death with one of his first patients as a third-year medical student. Because there was an emergency on the ward, Nuland had unusual autonomy over the admittance of a new patient named McCarty--even all the nurses were busy with the emergency. "McCarty greeted me with a thin forced smile," Nuland says, "but he couldn't have found my presence reassuring." Nuland says he still wonders what McCarty thought of this greenhorn supposedly taking charge of his case. Whatever, McCarty didn't get much time to weigh the pros and cons, because Nuland writes, "As I sat down at his bedside, he suddenly threw his head back and bellowed out a wordless roar that seemed to rise up out of his throat from somewhere deep within his stricken heart. He hit his balled fist with startling force up against the front of his chest in a single synchronous thump, just as his face and neck, in the flash of an instant, turned swollen and purple. His eyes seemed to have pushed themselves forward in one bulging thrust, as though they were trying to leap out of his head. He took one immensely long, gurgling breath, and died." Nuland says an experienced doctor would have known from the glazed eyes and fixed pupils that McCarty was gone, but his innocence wouldn't accept it. Nuland went on to make a mess of things by cutting open McCarty's chest, trying to resuscitate the wriggling heart that was past all help. Finally giving up, Nuland found himself bathed in sweat that was "pouring down my face, and my hands and my short white medical student's coat were drenched with the dark lifeless blood that had oozed out of McCarty's chest incision." He also realized that he was crying and that he had been shouting at McCarty to live. Not what you'd call entertaining stuff, but nevertheless riveting for those of us not familiar with this territory. So what do I get out of a book like this? The sentiment is old, but so true: Live life to the fullest until I emit that final wordless roar.