A bildungsroman, a philosophy text, a death chronicle. All together, one at a time.
Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2019
Verified Purchase
This is an excellent book.

How to add something new to the many thousands of reviews that have already been written?

First is the brevity of the book. A lot of times when people write about philosophy, they expatiate at great length.

Not so for this author.

He got in and out and said everything that he had to in just over 200 pages.

Second is that we all have to come to the end of our life, but it is good to read the thoughts of a man who is facing this for at least 2 reasons:

1. Because he was an extremely smart person.
2. Also, because he changed roles from a physician who saw people under his care die every day to being a person who was facing his own mortality.

In this way he lent us a perspective that many cannot.

The book is in various proportions..... A bildungsroman, a philosophy text, and an end-of-life chronicle.

When the author describes some of the difficulties toward the end of his life, he is so neutral that it almost sounds like he's writing a textbook in first person. ("My serum sodium had reached a near-fatal level.... Part of my soft palate and pharynx died from dehydration..... my kidneys began to fail.")

There is also the beauty of the prose. This level of writing is not quite to the level of Arthur golden, but it's probably around the level of John Green.

Verdict: Recommended at the new price.