Final Choices: Seeking the Good Death

by Michael Vitez

The death of a loved one is never easy to face. However, the many choices now available to critically ill patients and their families try to make the experience less mysterious and frightening by giving people more control over how and where they will die. Today's options include nursing homes, hospice care, and even assisted suicide. Yet the range of choices can also cause families more pain as they try to make the best decision with the fewest regrets. In this Pulitzer Prize-winning chronicle, Michael Vitez presents five options and the people who chose them. The courage and strength of the men and women portrayed in this book will undoubtedly lead readers to think and talk more about their own ideas and decisions regarding death.

72 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1997

About the author

Michael Vitez is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author whose work celebrates resilience, dignity, and the extraordinary within the everyday. For three decades, he wrote human-interest stories for The Philadelphia Inquirer, including a landmark series on end-of-life care that earned him the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism in 1997. He is the author of several books, among them Final Choices, Rocky Stories, The Road Back, and Great Americans. Today, he directs the Narrative Medicine program at Temple University's Lewis Katz School of Medicine, helping future doctors understand the power of storytelling in healthcare.