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| Author: Sherwin B. Nuland
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $0.88
You Save: $14.07 (94%)
New (57) Used (102) Collectible (8) from $0.88
Avg. Customer Rating:  66 reviews
Sales Rank: 6210
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 0679742441
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.078
EAN: 9780679742449
ASIN: 0679742441
Publication Date: January 15, 1995
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Standard used condition.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Most Necessary Book About Death & Dying! November 6, 2005
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
What a simply amazing and compassionate book about death and dying. None of us wants to think about how or when we will die. For those of you who fear death, reading this book will help to ease many of your fears.
We often wonder just what a person feels or thinks about during the dying process and this book helps to answer alot of questions. It also addresses the question about just how long we should prolong a person's life.
I wish I had read this book before my mom died a few years ago. I was with her in the nursing home on her deathbed and I was left with so many questions that needed to be answered. This book would have been a great comfort.
After experiencing mom's struggle with Alzheimer's and being with her at the moment of death I started to prepare some type of document containing my final wishes. Before I read this marvelous book I had purchased a brilliant new publication by Renata Marie Vestevich called, "Grant Me My Final Wish: A personal journal to simplify life's inevitable journey." Ms. Vestevich has created a beautifully bound journal which will act as a person's ethical will. She gently guides the reader through the process of making their final wishes known. Inside the journal are places for you to leave behind your most precious photos as well as your most treasured memories. Long after you are gone your loved ones will be able to remember you through this beautiful journal. Use this journal along with this book to guide you through the process of having to one day, too, make that final journey. Prepare yourself now and rest assured when it is time for you to leave this earth that you will have made your wishes known as well as having left behind a living legacy for those you love.
Fine, Especially for the Non Medical Pros Out There! November 2, 2005
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
This book is about as perfect as can be, given the inevitably sad and macabre subject! Starting with the author's first immediate experience of death when he was a young intern in the early 1950's, the book expands into a message about the beauty of life and the actual necessity of death, for it allows the new and the young their rightful place! Death is described as being the lack of oxygen to the brain, though every death is unique. As a child,the author lived in a cramped Bronx tenement, and witnessed the slow deterioration of his grandmother first hand, until the end occurred in her 97th year. Quite a moving description! His older brother's struggle with cancer is also described. Perhaps most interesting is the author's description of "Bob", who paradoxically died as good a death as is possible, making his final Christmas a celebration of his life, and death as the final chapter. For a non-medical person, the clear descriptions of myriad types of death are most edifying, including cancer, heart disease, accidents, AIDS, among other others. Yes, even though the subject is not pleasant, the final message is one of hope through a good life.
How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter October 9, 2005
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I thought the book was excellently written, although somewhat unnerving. It clinically describes what happens to the body when one dies from various causes. The desciption of cancer was particularly eye opening. The author's vocabulary was awesome. The main reason that one should read the book is so that knowing what is happening to you, you can make more informed decisions. There are times when you need to ask for help and/or there is a time when you have reached the point of diminishing returns and should consider giving up the journey. The author asserts the point "There is no death with diginity." The dignity belongs to the well person and how they lived their lives.
No exceptions September 27, 2005
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
This is a sane and sensible treatment of a most painful subject. Nuland is not only a physician and writer, he is a compassionate human being and an educator. He aims in this work to teach us how to prepare for the inevitable, how to better understand how to deal with death when it comes.
As he understands it there is a tendency to romanticize the final moments, to imagine the end of the drama is a kind of bedside scene in which family and friends gather to say farewell to one who peacefully slips off. Nuland would disabuse us of that notion and teach that Death is ordinarily more messy prolonged and complicated than we would like. And that it often comes only through the deprivation of the dignity of the suffering patient.
He emphasizes that our human goal should be not to focus overmuch on the death of the person, but rather on their life and its remembrance.
He examines the major causes of death, Old Age, Cancer, Heart Disease, Trauma, Aids, Alzheimers. He gives us moving case - histories one of his own grandmother's passing from the world, the other of a young child suddenly killed. He underlines the point that no matter how healthy the person thinks they are they can never know when and how Death will come. No one has a guarantee of an easy way out.
He does not really touch upon any religious or spiritual consolation. And though he indicates that he did say the Jewish prayer of mourning Kaddish for his mother he gives no indication that he believes in an afterlife. "If there is a God," he says, "He is present as much in the creation of each of us as He was at the creation of the earth".
He again would have us focus on life. And so he warns against those who would struggle at any and all costs to artificially extend life through heroic measures i.e. he urges an acceptance of Death as inevitable and necessary. He on the other side he is in general against giving patients' the right to take their
own lives.
This work may tell some more than they ever want to know about death, and may help others better prepare for it.
The late William Saroyan on his deathbed was seen shaking his head. When he was asked what it is , he said," I knew everybody had to die , but in my case I thought they would make an exception'
They did not.
For each and every one of us one of the most chilling facts of life is that we too will not be an exception.
And as I write this I write it with a certain fear and a prayer to God for help.
Gifted surgeon is a humanist and expressive writer. September 21, 2005
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Dr. Sherwin Nuland has the rare ability to draw upon his professional experience as a noted surgeon to elaborate and illuminate the twists and turns that affect our physical make-up and body in a writing style evoking clarity, ease and grace.
His humanistic touch and bsckground of spirituality shines through " How We Die " and his other book I've read, " The Wisdom of the Body". What Philip Johnson was to architecture, J. Robert Oppenheimer to physics, Eduard Manet to painting, "Shep" Nuland is to the medical profession as author and surgeon.
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