Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Mar 2019
320 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
A stunning meditation on impermanence and the role of medicine in helping us to live and die well, arming readers with information that will transform how we communicate with our doctors about what matters most to us.
As the American born daughter of immigrants, Dr. Sunita Puri knew from a young age that the gulf between her parents' experiences and her own was impossible to bridge, save for two elements: medicine and spirituality. Between days spent waiting for her mother, an anesthesiologist, to exit the OR, and evenings spent in conversation with her parents about their faith, Puri witnessed the tension between medicine's impulse to preserve life at all costs and a spiritual embrace of life's temporality. And it was that tension that eventually drew Puri, a passionate but unsatisfied medical student, to palliative medicine - a new specialty attempting to translate the border between medical intervention and quality-of-life care.
"Starred Review. This is a powerful memoir, which Puri narrates with honesty, poise, and empathy." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A profound meditation on a problem many of us will face; worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Atul Gawande's Being Mortal." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. This thoughtful treatise on life, death, and medicine should make readers feel more grateful for every day they have because, as Puri and her colleagues come to realize, no one knows what's coming or when to their loved ones or themselves." - Booklist
"Rich with piercing insights about life and death in modern medicine, Dr. Sunita Puri's memoir braids together beautifully written narratives of her patients with her quest to understand her place in her family and her path as a doctor." - Ira Byock, MD, author of Dying Well and The Best Care Possible
"This is a lively and fascinating book that will be a crucial part of the expanding cultural conversation about how we think about death. Everyone alive should read it." - Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable
"The face of the new generation of physicians, Dr. Sunita Puri's book reflects the art and craft of practicing medicine. There's no harder diagnosis to process than a fatal illness, and when it happens you need a doctor with the space, time, and desire to extend empathy. Without that, it doesn't matter what we mandate, legislate, propose or discuss." - Victoria Sweet, author of Slow Medicine and God's Hotel
"Spiritually grounded, poetic, and brilliant ... Puri has claimed her place in the ranks of illustrious physician-writers." - Katy Butler, author of Knocking on Heaven's Door
This information about That Good Night was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sunita Puri is an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern California, and medical director of palliative medicine at the Keck Hospital and Norris Cancer Center. She has published essays in The New York Times, Slate, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and JAMA-Internal Medicine. She lives in Los Angeles.
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