Free Audio Book : When Breath Becomes Air, By Paul Kalanithi

At the age of 36, on the brink of completing nearly a decade of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi received the devastating diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a physician treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to survive. In an instant, the future he and his wife had envisioned dissolved. When Breath Becomes Air recounts Kalanithi's journey from a hopeful medical student driven, as he wrote, by the question of how to lead a virtuous and meaningful life in the face of inevitable death, to becoming a neurosurgeon at Stanford focused on the brain, the epicenter of human identity, and ultimately into a patient and a new father grappling with his own mortality.

What gives life its value when confronted with mortality? How do you navigate a present that stretches out indefinitely when the future, once a path to your aspirations, flattens into an eternal now? What is the significance of bringing a child into the world while another life fades away? These are some of the inquiries Kalanithi grapples with in this deeply poignant and exquisitely observed memoir.

Although Paul Kalanithi passed away in March 2015 while working on this book, his words endure as a source of guidance and enrichment for us all. "I began to realize that confronting my own mortality, in a way, had changed everything and nothing," he penned. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett started echoing in my mind: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air offers an indelible, life-affirming contemplation of the struggle against death and the intricate bond between physician and patient, as recounted by a gifted writer who embraced both roles.