This compendium of resources on death and dying has been compiled by our volunteers Meesh Rheault Miller and Jim Hill.
Nonfiction
- Blackman, Sushila, ed. Graceful Exits: How Great Beings Die (Death Stories of Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist and Zen Masters), 2005
- Brewer, Colin, ed. I’ll See Myself Out, Thank You: Thirty Personal Views in Support of Assisted Suicide, 2015
- Butler, Katy, Knocking on Heaven’s Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death, 2013
- Callanan, Maggie & Patricia Kelley, Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs and Communications of the Dying, 1997
- Dass, Ram, Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying, 2001
- Gawande, Atul, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, 2014
- Halifax, Joan, Being With Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death, 2008
- Kessler, David, The Needs of the Dying: A Guide for Bringing Hope, Comfort and Love to Life’s Final Chapter, 2007
- Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy and their Own Families, 2nd Edition, 2014 (originally 1997)
- Levine, Stephen, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as if it Were Your Last, 1998
- ___________, Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying, 1989
- Lindner, Eric, Hospice Voices: Lessons for Living at the End of Life, 2015
- McKissock, Nina Angela, From Sun to Sun: A Hospice Nurse Reflects on the Art of Dying, 2015
- Mitford, Jessica, The American Way of Death Revisited, 2000
- Nuland, Sherwin B, How We Die: Reflections of Life’s Final Chapter, 1995
- Pappas, Demetra M., The Euthanasia/Assisted-Suicide Debate, 2012
- Russo, Richard & Siri Beckman, eds. A Healing Touch True Stories of Life, Death and Hospice, 2008
- Viorst, Judith, Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow, 1998
Memoirs
- Didion, Joan, Blue Nights, 2011
- ___________ , The Year of Magical Thinking, 1997
- Hartmann, Christine W., So Far Away: A Daughter’s Memoir of Life, Loss & Love, 2011
- Hitchens, Christopher, Mortality, 2012
- Lewis, C. S., A Grief Observed, 1961
- Oates, Joyce Carol, A Widow’s Story, 2011
Fiction
- Chast, Roz. Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, 2014 [Graphic Novel]
- Furber, Winslow. A Very Young Reaper, 2017
- Harding, Paul. Tinkers, 2009
- Levine, Carol, ed. Living in the Land of Limbo: Fiction & Poetry about Family Caregiving, 2014
- Oakley, Colleen. Before I Go, 2015
Magazine/Newspaper Articles
- Drum, Kevin. “My Right to Die: Assisted Suicide, my family, and me.” Mother Jones Magazine, Jan/Feb 2016
- Jarvis, Brooke. “When I Die: An end-of-life doctor faces his own end.” Harper’s Magazine, April 2016
- Mohammed, Zaineb. “Why Americans Can’t Die With Dignity: Author Katy Butler on overtreatment, end-of-life suffering, and the need for a Slow Medicine movement.” Mother Jones Magazine, September 2013
Film/Video
- Promise Me, 2016, 8 min. (Drama) – A fictional story of a Texas woman’s last moments prior to taking a lethal dose of medications.
- Seven Songs for a Long Life, 2016, 82 min. (Documentary) – A Scottish film telling the end-of-life stories of six hospice patients.
- Dying To Know, 2011, 30 min. Dying Matters/Flix Films. (Docudrama) – Selected for the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, this film aims to prompt conversations about death and dying.
- How To Die In Oregon, 2011, 1 hr 47 min. Peter Richardson, Dir., HBO. (Documentary) – This film explores real-life responses to Oregon’s “Death with Dignity Act,” the first law in the U.S. to legalize physician-assisted dying for the terminally ill.
- I Didn’t Want That, 2009, 7 min. Flix Films. (Docudrama) – Five separate end-of-life scenarios examine what can happen if you fail to make your end-of-life wishes known.
- Let’s Talk About Dying, 2011, 13 min. (TED Talk) – We can’t control if we’ll die, but we can “occupy death,” in the words of Peter Saul, an emergency doctor. He asks us to think about the end of our lives and to question the modern model of slow, intubated death in hospital.
- My Mushroom Burial Suit, 2011, 8 min. (TED Talk) – Artist and TED Fellow Jae Rhim Lee re-imagines the relationships between the body and the world. Lee proposes an environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional burial and cremation.
- What Really Matters At The End Of Life, 2015, 19 min. (TED Talk) – BJ Miller is a palliative care physician at Zen Hospice Project who thinks deeply about how to create a dignified, graceful end of life for his patients.