M.A. Book Club: "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End"

Event Title: Morbid Anatomy Book Club: "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End" by Atul Gawande

Event Date: Sunday, Oct. 19, 2025 at 4:00-5:00 PM EST

Ticketing Info: FREE to Morbid Anatomy Patreon Members at the Memento Mori ($5/month) and above levels. Eligible members will get an invitation in their Patreon inbox. Become a member here. For the event description, go here: https://www.morbidanatomy.org/events/2025/3/30/morbid-anatomy-book-club-a-nervous-splendor-by-frederic-morton

Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out two hours before the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email [info.morbidanatomy@gmail.com](mailto:info.morbidanatomy@gmail.com). (Video playback of this event is only available to Morbid Anatomy's Patreon members.)

Event Description:
Join death midwife Lisa Cox discuss Atul Gawande’s classic tome Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (2014). Modern medicine keeps us alive, extends our lives in aging and terminal illness. But what is the cost to quality of life as we approach the end? In this book, physician Atul Gawandi, drawing on experience with patients and his own family, grapples with the question of how to improve quality of life, rather than simply adding quantity, right up to death.

About the Author:

• Dr. Atul Gawande is a surgeon, writer, and public health researcher. He practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and is a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, as well as a Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He's the author of several other books besides Being Mortal, including Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science (2002), Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance (2007), and The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right (2009).

About the Book Club Leader:

• Lisa Cox is a teacher, shamanic practitioner, and Wyoming's Death Midwife, whose practice Hjertehagen Healing Passages provides life transition and support, physical, emotional and spiritual, during and at the end of life and beyond. A Maine native and Wyoming transplant, Lisa holds degrees in History, Education and Political and Soil Science. She has completed the Advanced Shamanic Healing program in Core Shamanism, is currently in the 3 Year Program in Advanced Initiations through the FSS-E in Italy, and completed training through Death Midwife. In addition to her healing practice, Lisa pays the rent by providing exceptional pet care in the community. When not in her healing space or doing "country doctor rounds," she can be found cooking, hiking or snowshoeing, reading, or sitting on a lake in her kayak.

About the Event Host:
This event is hosted by the Morbid Anatomy Blog & Library, a website dedicated to interstices of art and medicine, death and culture. Morbid Anatomy was created in 2007 as a blog by Joanna Ebenstein, a multi-disciplinary artist, curator, writer, lecturer and graphic designer. It later expanded to include a library of lectures, exhibitions, classes, spectacles, symposia, field trips, books, parties, and films. It is best known for its brief incarnation as the critically acclaimed Morbid Anatomy Museum (2013-2016) in Brooklyn, New York.

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