Books to pair with Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal

In February 2025, contributors to the Health Humanities Consortium listserv provided these recommendations in response to a question about readings that would pair well with Atul Gawande's, Being Mortal. The following works were suggested by various members of the listserv:

  • When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
  • The Emperor of Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee 
  • In My Time of Dying by Sebastian Junger
  • Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
  • Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad
  • You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith
  • I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
  • The First Cell by Azra Raza
  • Gray Matters by Theodore H. Schwartz
  • Shattered by Hanif Kureishi
  • The People’s Hospital by Ricardo Nuila
  • Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
  • The Soul of Care by Arthur Kleinman
  • Early by Sarah DiGregorio
  • Final Exam by Pauline W. Chen
  • In Pain by Travis Rieder
  • Reverence for Life by Marvin Meyer
  • Sentenced to Science by Allen M. Hornblum
  • When Winter Came by Mary Beth Sartor Obermeyer
  • All that Really Matters by David Weill 
  • Do No Harm by Henry Marsh
  • The Inevitable Hour by Emily Abel 
  • Final exam A surgeon’s reflections on mortality by Pauline W. Chen. 
  • In Shock, by Dr. Rana Awdish
  • And a Time to Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life.Sharon Kaufman
In addition, Allan Peterkin of the University of Toronto has assembled a Grief and Loss Reading list (in collaboration with the Canadian Grief Alliance). The Graphic Medicine Interactional Collective also has curated a page of comics on end-of-life, entitled Death Panels: Comics and End of Life.

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      Type of Teaching Material: Bibliography/reading list

      Setting (class level or workshop): Undergraduate

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