Butler’s factual, no-nonsense tone is surprisingly comforting, as are her stories of how ordinary folks confronted difficult medical decisions... Her thoughtful book belongs on the same shelf as Atul Gawande’s best-selling Being Mortal and Barbara Ehrenreich’s Natural Causes .”The Washington Post Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe USA Today Shelf Awareness Publishers Weekly The Art of Dying Well... For all of us boomers who have wondered how we might apply what we learned from the passing of our parents, and make the process smoother — and yes, profound — for our children, here are some really good answers.”Barbara Peters Smith , Sarasota Herald-Tribune Margareta Magnusson, author of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning The Art of Dying Well is a guide to just that: how to face the inevitable in an artful way. Katy Butler has clear eyes and speaks plainly about complicated decisions. This book is chock-full of good ideas.”Sallie Tisdale, author of Advice for Future Corpses Diane E. Meier , MD, Director, Center to Advance Palliative Care The Art of Dying Well is a warm, wise and straightforward guide, hugely helpful to anyone—everyone—who will go through the complex journey to the end of life.”Ellen Goodman , Founder, The Conversation Project Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Natural Causes Lucy Kalanithi, MD, FACP, Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine, Stanford School of Medicine Ira Byock, MD, author of Dying Well and The Best Care Possible , Active Emeritus Professor of Medicine, the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth Praise for Katy Butler and Knocking on Heaven's Door Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland, author of How We Die: Reflections of Life's Final Chapter Knocking on Heaven’s Door is a thoroughly researched and compelling mix of personal narrative and hard-nosed reporting that captures just how flawed care at the end of life has become."Abraham Verghese, New York Times Book Review Anne Lamott, author of Help, Thanks, Wow Lindsey Crittenden, Spirituality and Health Magazine Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star Tribune Knocking on Heaven's Door grapples with how we need to protect our loved ones and ourselves."More Magazine Kirkus Reviews Knocking on Heaven’s Door is a terrible, beautiful book that offers the information we need to navigate the complicated world of procedure and technology-driven health care.”Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia and Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World —Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost and To End All Wars Joan Halifax, PhD, Founding Abbot, Upaya Institute/Zen Center and Director, Project on Being With Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death Knocking on Heaven’s Door makes it clear that until care of the soul, families, and communities become central to our medical approaches, true quality of care for elders will not be achieved."Dennis McCullough, author of My Mother, Your Mother: Embracing "Slow Medicine," the Compassionate Approach to Caring Knocking on Heaven’s Door [is] a book those caring for dying parents will want to read and reread. [It] will help those many of us who have tended or will tend dying parents to accept the beauty of our imperfect caregiving."Suzanne Koven, Boston Globe Knocking on Heaven's Door is more than just a guide to dying, or a personal story of a difficult death: It is a lyrical meditation on death written with extraordinary beauty and sensitivity."San Francisco Chronicle
"[Knocking on Heaven's Door is] a triumph, distinguished by the beauty of Ms. Butler's prose and her saber-sharp indictment of certain medical habits. [Butler offers an] articulate challenge to the medical profession: to reconsider its reflexive postponement of death long after lifesaving acts cease to be anything but pure brutality."Abigail Zuger, MD, The New York Times
New York Times - Abigail Zuger
12/17/2018
Journalist Butler offers a straightforward, well-organized, nondepressing guide to managing the run-up to one’s inevitable demise. Each chapter features different end-of-life–related themes and exemplary real-world anecdotes of how people cope with different age-related difficulties, with an emphasis on the mental as well as physical aspects of coping with old age and the associated infirmities. Butler’s advice is commonsensical without being platitudinous or folksy. One point she particularly stresses is the wisdom of staying away from hospitals when possible. She uses vivid terms to illustrate her points, such as “House of Cards” to refer to a fragile state of health, “common in people in their nineties or in the mid to later stages of dementia.” No doubt to the delight of nonagenarians everywhere, Butler’s advice to them is not cautionary but rather to indulge in pleasurable activities as much as possible: what she calls “enjoying your red velvet cake.” Free of platitudes, Butler’s voice makes the most intimidating of processes—that of dying—come across as approachable. Her reasonable, down-to-earth tone makes for an effective preparatory guide to the permanent holiday upon which everyone eventually embarks. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM. (Feb.)
This is some of the most important material I have read in years, and so beautifully written. It is riveting, and even with parents long gone, I found it very hard to put down. ... I am deeply grateful for its truth, wisdom, and gorgeous stories—some heartbreaking, some life-giving, some both at the same time. Butler is an amazing and generous writer. This book will change you, and, I hope, our society."
author of Help, Thanks, Wow - Anne Lamott
"Knocking on Heaven's Door is more than just a guide to dying, or a personal story of a difficult death: It is a lyrical meditation on death written with extraordinary beauty and sensitivity."
"[A] deeply felt book...[Butler] is both thoughtful and passionate about the hard questions she raises — questions that most of us will at some point have to consider. Given our rapidly aging population, the timing of this tough and important book could not be better."
Minneapolis Star Tribune - Laurie Hertzel
This is a book so honest, so insightful and so achingly beautiful that its poetic essence transcends even the anguished story that it tells. Katy Butler’s perceptive intellect has probed deeply, and seen into the many troubling aspects of our nation’s inability to deal with the reality of dying in the 21st century: emotional, spiritual, medical, financial, social, historical and even political. And yet, though such valuable insights are presented with a journalist’s clear eye, they are so skillfully woven into the narrative of her beloved parents’ deaths that every sentence seems to come from the very wellspring of the human spirit that is in her."
"This braid of a book...examines the battle between death and the imperatives of modern medicine. Impeccably reported, Knocking on Heaven's Door grapples with how we need to protect our loved ones and ourselves."
"This is the most important book you and I can read. It is not just about dying, it is about life, our political and medical system, and how to face and address the profound ethical and personal issues that we encounter as we care for those facing dying and death. [This book's] tenderness, beauty, and heart-breaking honesty matches the stunning data on dying in the West. A splendid and compassionate endeavor."
Katy Butler’s science background and her gift for metaphor make her a wonderfully engaging storyteller, even as she depicts one of our saddest but most common experiences: that of a slow death in an American hospital. Knocking on Heaven’s Door is a terrible, beautiful book that offers the information we need to navigate the complicated world of procedure and technology-driven health care.
author of Reviving Ophelia and Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World - Mary Pipher
"This beautifully written and well researched book will take you deep into the unexplored heart of aging and medical care in America today. With courage, unrelenting honesty, and deepest compassion, ... Knocking on Heaven’s Door makes it clear that until care of the soul, families, and communities become central to our medical approaches, true quality of care for elders will not be achieved."
author of My Mother, Your Mother: Embracing "Slow Medicine,'" the Compassionate Approach to Cari - Dennis McCullough
"Butler’s advice is neither formulaic nor derived from pamphlets...[it] is useful, and her challenge of our culture of denial about death necessary...Knocking on Heaven’s Door [is] a book those caring for dying parents will want to read and reread. [It] will help those many of us who have tended or will tend dying parents to accept the beauty of our imperfect caregiving."
Boston Globe - Suzanne Koven
"Katy Butler's new book—brave, frank, poignant, and loving—will encourage the conversation we, as a society, desperately need to have about better ways of dying. From her own closely-examined personal experience, she fearlessly poses the difficult questions that sooner or later will face us all.
author of King Leopold’s Ghost and To End All Wars - Adam Hochschild
Knocking on Heaven’s Door is a thoroughly researched and compelling mix of personal narrative and hard-nosed reporting that captures just how flawed care at the end of life has become."
"Shimmer[s] with grace, lucid intelligence, and solace."
Spirituality and Health Magazine - Lindsey Crittenden
"Knocking on Heaven's Door is more than just a guide to dying, or a personal story of a difficult death: It is a lyrical meditation on death written with extraordinary beauty and sensitivity."
09/01/2018New York Times best-selling Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death , Butler again explores how we die in contemporary times, especially America, claiming that we need better rituals to ease the transition between life and death.
Author and narrator Katy Butler’s calming tone softens her insights on reclaiming control over one’s life and death. Butler is straightforward in her belief that modern medicine eliminates the customs, rituals, and recognition of this rite of passage. She believes that the desire to prolong life has created secrecy, fear, and shame around dying. Her message that today’s medical system postpones death and disregards the integrity that death and dying once had is sobering, however. As narrator, her sincerity is comforting and encouraging, and her soothing voice and practical advice scale back the daunting journey of preparing and managing for a peaceful and humane death process in this era of high-tech medicine. This is indispensable information delivered with compassion and frankness. M.F. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
Author and narrator Katy Butler’s calming tone softens her insights on reclaiming control over one’s life and death. Butler is straightforward in her belief that modern medicine eliminates the customs, rituals, and recognition of this rite of passage. She believes that the desire to prolong life has created secrecy, fear, and shame around dying. Her message that today’s medical system postpones death and disregards the integrity that death and dying once had is sobering, however. As narrator, her sincerity is comforting and encouraging, and her soothing voice and practical advice scale back the daunting journey of preparing and managing for a peaceful and humane death process in this era of high-tech medicine. This is indispensable information delivered with compassion and frankness. M.F. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
