The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead

David Shields author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd

Published:3rd Mar '11

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead cover

Mesmerized and somewhat unnerved by his 97-year-old father's vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an original investigation of our flesh-and-blood existence, our mortal being.
Weaving together personal anecdote, biological fact, philosophical doubt, cultural criticism, and the wisdom of an eclectic range of writers and thinkers - from Lucretius to Woody Allen - Shields expertly renders both a hilarious family portrait and a truly resonant meditation on mortality.

So pure and wide in its implications that I think of it almost as a secular, unsentimental Kahlil Gibran: a textbook for the acceptance of our fate on earth -- Jonathan Lethem
Breathtaking . . . Shields had us laughing out loud, even in the face of death * Timeout, Chicago *
Mix equal parts of anatomy and autobiography, science and self-disclosure, physiology and family history; shake, stir, add dashes of miscellany, pinches of borrowed wisdom, simmer over a low-grade fever of mortality, and a terrible beauty of a book is born -- Thomas Lynch * Boston Globe *
Shields is a sharp-eyed, self-deprecating, at times hilarious writer * Wall Street Journal *

ISBN: 9780141049496

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 16mm

Weight: 181g

256 pages