Paul Kalanithi was thirty six years old when he was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. How ridiculously unfair that someone who had worked so hard to become a neurosurgeon and could have helped so many people was destined to die so young. But he doesn’t whine about it: instead he writes this beautiful, sparse book which is all the more powerful for not being full of uplifting quotes. The loss of such a humane and intelligent man is brutal and unfathomable; the book he left behind underscores that but it is also, profoundly, about life. Just read it. Please.
