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

Shields, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141049499 ISBN 13: 9780141049496

Publisher: Penguin, 2011

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

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)

About the Author:

David Shields is the author of nine other books, including Reality Hunger and Black Planet, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work has been translated into a dozen languages.

www.davidshields.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0141049499
• ISBN 13: 9780141049496
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256