Upcoming Books:
May 21
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
June 15
The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

Book Review "Gawande writes: “For many, such talk, however carefully framed, raises the specter of a society readying itself to sacrifice its sick and aged. But what if the sick and aged are already being sacrificed — victims of our refusal to accept the inexorability of our life cycle?”Atul Gawande's Being Mortal. Sheri Fink, November 6, 2014 The New York Times  Book Review

Author Bio: 

Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, is a surgeon, writer, and public health researcher. He practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He is also Executive Director of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and Chairman of Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally. From http://atulgawande.com/book/being-mortal/
Author Quotes: “Understanding people's priorities to help guide what you are fighting for. The evidence indicates the most effective way to find out what people's priorities are - is to ask. And we don't ask. ”  University of Chicago, Department of Pediatrics Grand Rounds lecture series. 10/27/2014
Read BExtraordinaire Blog for more reviews on our next book club selection. 
is reading "Being Mortal"  written by Atul Gawande for May 21. 

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, a surgeon who writes about what happens to the human body as we grow older and die. He recognized during his medical training how little attention was devoted to the subject of death and the end of life. 

Medical training is about life and health, and how to preserve it. He felt he was unprepared to deal with mortality and to discuss death and dying with his patients and their families. As physicians, we were not good at handling patients during the last phases of their life. When his father was diagnosed with cancer, he decided to not take any therapy. As he pressed his father to reconsider his decision, Gawande had a revelation that hope was not a plan. His father's illness was going to progress. He was going to die. It caused him to think that doctors have been inflicting therapies on patients that shorten their lives and increase their suffering. This idea drove him to write this book and to consider how we can change the way we think about being mortal. 

University of Chicago, Department of Pediatrics Grand Rounds lecture series on October 27, 2014