WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

At The Age Of Thirty-Six, On The Verge Of Completing A Decade’S Worth Of Training As A Neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi Was Diagnosed With Stage Iv Lung Cancer. One Day He Was A Doctor Treating The Dying, And The Next He Was A Patient Struggling To Live. And Just Like That, The Future He And His Wife Had Imagined 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, And Finally Into A Patient And New Father Confronting His Own Mortality.