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A Book About Life
by David R. Dow
"Every life is different, but every death is the same. We live with others. We die alone."
In his riveting, artfully written memoir The Autobiography of an Execution, David Dow enraptured readers with a searing and frank exploration of his work defending inmates on death row. But when Dow's father-in-law receives his own death sentence in the form of terminal cancer, and his gentle dog Winona suffers acute liver failure, the author is forced to reconcile with death in a far more personal way, both as a son and as a father.
Told through the disparate lenses of the legal battles he's spent a career fighting, and the intimate confrontations with death each family faces at home, Things I've Learned from Dying offers a poignant and lyrical account of how illness and loss can ravage a family. Full of grace and intelligence, Dow offers readers hope without cliché and reaffirms our basic human needs for acceptance and love by giving voice to the anguish we all face - as parents, as children, as partners, as friends - when our loved ones die tragically, and far too soon.
"Starred Review. Lawyer Dow (Autobiography of an Execution) eloquently draws us into this gracefully told memoir about his angry and painful struggles to sort out the lessons that death teaches us about living." - Publishers Weekly
"Sad and inspiring reflections of what it means to live, love and die." - Kirkus
"His prose is captivating." - Christian Science Monitor
"Powerful… a brilliant, heartrending book." - New York Times Book Review
This information about Things I've Learned from Dying 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.
David R. Dow is professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center and an internationally recognized figure in the fight against the death penalty. Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award for The Autobiography of an Execution, he is also the founder and director of the Texas Innocence Network and has represented more than one hundred death row inmates in their state and federal appeals. He lives in Houston, Texas.
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