Non-Fiction

Knocking on Heaven’s Door: The Path to a Better Way of Deathby Katy Butler – “…award-winning journalist Katy Butler ponders her parents’ desires for “Good Deaths” and the forces within medicine that stood in the way.”

How We Die: Reflections of Life’s Final Chapter, by Sherwin Nuland, M.D. – “An international bestseller, Sherwin B. Nuland’s How We Die has come to be regarded as the definitive book about the most universal human concern: death.”

What Kind of Life: The Limits of Medical Progressby Daniel Callahan, Ph.D. “A sober, bracing and important look at the realities of medicine and its costs.”―Los Angeles Times

Fictional Death & The Modernist Enterpriseby Alan Warren Friedman, Ph.D. – “Friedman traces the semiotics of death and dying in twentieth-century fiction, history, and culture.”

Death’s Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieveby Sandra M. Gilbert – Gilbert “examines both the changelessness of grief and the changing customs that mark contemporary mourning.”

Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Healby Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. – Dr. Remen “has gathered stories … of owning, having and losing; stories of power, pain, courage and hope. These stories let us look at our wounds and provide us with tools to begin healing them.”

Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande, M.D. – Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending.

Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs and Communications of the Dyingby Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley – Authors and hospice nurses Callanan and Kelley share their intimate experiences with patients at the end of life, drawn from more than twenty years’ experience tending the terminally ill.

False Hopes: Why America’s Quest for Perfect Health is a Recipe for Failure, by Daniel Callahan, Ph.D. – Callahan traces the root cause of America’s health-care crisis not to inefficient organization or waste, but rather to society’s and the medical community’s relentless quest for perfection.

The Long Lifeby Helen Small – Small argues that if we want to understand old age, we have to think more fundamentally about what it means to be a person, to have a life, to have (or lead) a good life, to be part of a just society.

The Troubled Dream of Life: In Search of a Peaceful Death, by Daniel Callahan, Ph.D. – He examines how we view death and the care of the critically ill or dying, and he suggests ways of understanding death that can lead to a peaceful acceptance.

A Grief Observedby C.S. Lewis – A Grief Observed an unflinchingly truthful account of how loss can lead even a stalwart believer to lose all sense of meaning in the universe, and the inspirational tale of how he can possibly regain his bearings. 

Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying, by Stephen and Ondrea Levine – This is the first book to show the reader how to open to the immensity of living with death, to participate fully in life as the perfect preparation for whatever may come next.

On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy, and Their Own Families, by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross – Through sample interviews and conversations, Kubler-Ross gives the reader a better understanding of how imminent death affects the patient, the professionals who serve that patient, and the patient’s family, bringing hope to all who are involved.

Children and Deathby Elisabeth Kubler-Ross – Based on a decade of working with dying children, this compassionate book offers the families of dead and dying children the help — and hope — they need to survive.

The End of Your Life Book Clubby Will Schwalbe – This is the inspiring true story of a son and his mother, who start a “book club” that brings them together as her life comes to a close.

What Dying People Want: Practical Wisdom for the End of Life, by David Kuhl – In What Dying People Want, Dr. David Kuhl [addresses] end-of-life realities–practical and emotional–through his own experiences as a doctor and through the words and experiences of people who knew that they were dying.

The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselvesby Stephen Grosz – The Examined Life distills more than 50,000 hours of conversation into pure psychological insight without the jargon. This extraordinary book is about one ordinary process: talking, listening, and understanding.

Life Lessons: Two Experts on Death and Dying Teach us About the Mysteries of Life and Living, by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler – “The tragedy is not that life is short but that we often see only in hindsight what really matters.”

Dying Well: Peace and Possibilities at the End of Life, by Ira Byock, M.D. – From Ira Byock, prominent palliative care physician and expert in end of life decisions, a lesson in Dying Well.

Taming the Beloved Beast: How Medical Technology Costs are Destroying Our Health Care Systemby Daniel Callahan, Ph.D. – Callahan weighs the ethical arguments for and against limiting the use of medical technologies, and he argues that reining in health care costs requires us to change entrenched values about progress and technological innovation. 

Peaceful Journey: A Hospice Chaplain’s Guide to End of Life, by Matthew P. Binkewicz – Peaceful Journey examines the spiritual issues facing terminally ill patients and their families. Each chapter introduces the reader to a person with a spiritual issue that needs immediate attention.

Death, by Geoffrey Scarre – Death draws upon a wide variety of philosophical and literary sources to offer an up-to-date and highly readable study of some major ethical and metaphysical riddles concerning death and dying.

In Praise of Mortalityby Rainer Maria Rilke – The Sonnets are imbued with the poet’s deep reverence for nature. He laments the industrial age, which deprives us of time, imagination, and community and gives us an illusion of control over our mortality. And the Elegies are meditations on our impermanence, which Rilke embraced as our link to all life and all time.

A World Growing Old: The Coming Health Care ChallengesEdited by Daniel Callahan, Ruud H. J. Ter Meulen and Eva Topinkova – Essays focus on five general issues: the meaning of old age, the goals of medicine and health care for the elderly, the balance between the needs of the young and old, the pressures of other social priorities, and the role of families, especially the burden on women, in long-term care.

Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Societyby Daniel Callahan, Ph.D. – A provocative call to rethink America’s values in health care.

Death and the Quest for Meaning, edited by Stephen Strack – Topics in this book include the role of the caregiver, the process of grief and bereavement, religious and spiritual perspectives, and how children and adolescents cope with death.

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourselfby Michael A. Singer – By tapping into traditions of meditation and mindfulness, author and spiritual teacher Michael A. Singer shows how the development of consciousness can enable us all to dwell in the present moment and let go of painful thoughts and memories that keep us from achieving happiness and self-realization.

Facing Death: Images, Insights, and Interventionsby Sandra L. Bertman – Facing Death uses materials from the visual arts, excerpts from poetry, fiction, drama, and examples from popular culture to sensitize the reader to important, universal issues confronting the dying, and those responsible for their care.

Already Toast: Caregiving and Burnout in America, by Kate Washington – Already Toast shows how all-consuming caregiving can be, how difficult it is to find support, and how the social and literary narratives that have long locked women into providing emotional labor also keep them in unpaid caregiving roles. When Kate Washington and her husband, Brad, learned that he had cancer, they were a young couple: professionals with ascending careers, parents to two small children. Brad’s diagnosis stripped those identities away: he became a patient and she his caregiver.

Plan for Aging Well, by Stephanie Erickson, MSW, LCSW – Are you a caregiver and wonder if you’re doing all you can to support your aging relative? Or what about for yourself? Are you thinking about your own aging process and worried you won’t have the care and assistance you may need? Stephanie Erickson has combined all her work as a clinical social worker and family caregiving expert into a comprehensive, easy-to-follow book, containing step-by-step guides for all scenarios of you and your family’s aging journey.