When Breath Becomes Air

About When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air (2016) is the posthumously published memoir of a neurosurgeon diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer at thirty-six — a meditation on mortality, the meaning of work and relationships, and what makes a human life worth living. Kalanithi, who spent his career treating dying patients and thinking about what made their lives meaningful, was then forced to apply those questions to his own death.