When Breath Becomes Air

Acclaimed neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi was not your average doctor. At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, he was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was treating the dying, and the next he was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. And just like that, his future evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity.