The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die

BOOK OF THE YEAR IN SPECTATOR AND TIMES 'Fascinating.... Deeply disturbing... Brilliant' Sunday Times 'Powerful and moving.' Louis Theroux Meet Adam. He's twenty-seven years old, articulate and attractive. He also wants to die. Should he be helped? And by whom? In The Inevitable, award-winning journalist Katie Engelhart explores one of our most abiding taboos: assisted dying. From Avril, the 80-year-old British woman illegally importing pentobarbital, to the Australian doctor dispensing suicide manuals online, Engelhart travels the world to hear the stories of those on the quest for a 'good death'. At once intensely troubling and profoundly moving, The Inevitable interrogates our most uncomfortable moral questions. Should a young woman facing imminent paralysis be allowed to end her life with a doctor's help? Should we be free to die painlessly before dementia takes our mind? Or to choose death over old age? A deeply reported portrait of everyday people struggling to make impossible decisions, The Inevitable sheds crucial light on what it means to flourish, live and die.

Table of Contents:
0: Introduction 1: Modern Medicine 2: Age 3: Body 4: Memory 5: Mind 6: Freedom 7: The End

About the Author :
Katie Engelhart is a reporter and documentary film producer from Toronto and based in New York City. She is also a National Fellow at New America. Katie has worked as a correspondent for VICE News, based in London, and NBC News in New York. Her writing has appeared far and wide. Formerly, she was a graduate student of history and philosophy at Oxford University. This is her first book.

Review :
There's plenty of compassion, plenty of nuance and plenty of complex thought. Engelhart is a skilled storyteller... Her brilliant book should be prescribed to all those who think they have a clear view [on the right to die]. Compelling... Death is the only thing that's certain in life (hence the book's title) - and yet hardly anyone wants to discuss it. Engelhart is a wonderful exception, and her book is superb: well-reasoned arguments with absorbing personal stories. Remarkably nuanced, empathetic, and well-crafted. Deeply researched and beautifully reported... [Engelhart] writes compassionately of her subjects' struggles Powerful and moving. Engelhart recounts the stories of those she meets with humanity and grace. A brilliantly sensitive and deeply moving account of assisted dying. I couldn't stop reading. Katie Engelhart refuses to look away from death, or more accurately, from dying. The Inevitable challenges us to keep looking and asking hard questions, even if we are uncomfortable with the answers. Katie Engelhart has addressed an important question with clarity and compassion, drawing on the experience of individuals who, in their choices about when and how to die, teach us that a dignified and peaceful death adds value to life. If your much-loved dog is suffering and incurable, you ask a vet to end her life peacefully and painlessly. It is the moral thing to do. But for you and me it is different. In the transition to our peaceful oblivion, we are condemned to endure a purgatorial interlude of more or less protracted dying. There is a legal double standard. Katie Engelhart ably sets out the case for the right to choose when to die. I find it hard to imagine how a decent and rational person could resist it. A vital, gripping, deeply reported book, on what for us all of, sooner or later, is the most important topic in our lives. Brilliant... Engelhart's interviewees have a different story to tell. Beautiful... The Inevitable is impressive for its author's willingness to acknowledge mixed and murky motives