Event

Lucy Kalanithi in conversation with Cheryl Jennings

WE ARE EXPECTING AN OVERFLOW CROWD FOR THIS EVENT.

REGISTRATION DOES NOT GUARANTEE A SEAT.

IF YOU NEED WHEEL CHAIR ACCESS PLEASE EMAIL Jean@kepers.com to make arrangements.

Presented by Peninsula Arts & Letters and Kepler's Books

Monday, February 1, 2016

7:30pm

Kepler's Books
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA 94025

"When Breath Becomes Air"

"After reading the book you are about to read, I confess I felt inadequate: there was an honesty,a truth in the writing that took my breath away."
from the Foreword by Abraham Verghese

At the age of 36, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon at Stanford, Dr. Paul Kalanithi's health began to falter. A CT scan confirmed what Paul suspected: he had stage four lung cancer, widely disseminated. One day, he was a doctor who had devoted himself to treating the dying, and the next, he was a patient struggling to live. Just like that, the future he and his wife Lucy had imagined, the culmination of decades of striving, evaporated. On March 9, 2015, less than two years after his diagnosis, Paul passed away at the age of 37.

In When Breath Becomes Air, Paul addresses our most essential questions: What is a meaningful life, and what makes life worth living in the face of death? What happens when the future, instead of resembling a ladder that stretches upward toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present? Paul's wife Lucy and Cheryl Jennings from the ABC7 News Team will discuss Paul's life, his work, and his posthumous published book.

"Rattling, heartbreaking, and ultimately beautiful, the too-young Dr. Kalanithi's memoir is proof that the dying are the ones who have the most to teach us about life."Atul Gawande

"Thanks to When Breath Becomes Air, those of us who never met Paul Kalanithi will both mourn his death and benefit from his life. This is one of a handful of books I consider to be a universal donorI would recommend it to anyone, everyone."Ann Patchett

This event is free but please register here.