Best Sociology of Death Books of 2025

"It's OK That You're Not OK" by Megan Devine is a profound book that debunks the culturally prescribed notion of returning to a normal, happy life after a painful loss. The book offers a far healthier middle path, one that invites us to build a life alongside grief rather than seeking to overcome it. Megan writes with deep insight about the unspoken truths of loss, love, and healing. She challenges the myths of grief, allowing us to accept grief as a mystery to be honored instead of a problem to solve. This book is an essential read for anyone who has experienced grief and wants to learn practical guidance for managing stress, improving sleep, and decreasing anxiety without trying to "fix" their pain.

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande is a thought-provoking book that explores the limitations of medicine in dealing with aging and death. Gawande draws on his own experiences as a surgeon and personal stories from patients and families to reveal the failures of the medical profession in providing a good life until the very end. The book has been highly praised for its honesty and humanity, with reviewers describing it as "wise and deeply moving" and "beautifully written." Overall, Being Mortal is a must-read for anyone interested in health policy and the human experience of aging and dying.

When Breath Becomes Air is an inspiring memoir about a young neurosurgeon's journey through life, death, and everything in between. Paul Kalanithi's diagnosis with stage IV lung cancer forced him to confront his own mortality, transforming him from a doctor to a patient and new father. Kalanithi wrestles with questions about the meaning of life, the value of human identity, and the importance of nurturing new life as another fades away. This profoundly moving and exquisitely observed memoir is a guide and a gift to us all. It is a unique and unforgettable read that will stay with you long after you finish the last page.

The most helpful grief book to read when you're ready to start healing after the loss of a loved one.The grief book that just "gets it." Whether you're grieving the sudden loss of a loved one or helping someone else through their grief, I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye offers a comforting hand to help guide you through the grieving process, from the first few weeks to the longer-term emotional and physical effects. It then reveals some of the myths of the grieving process and what really happens as you navigate through the pain.Top-rated within grief books, topics include:Grieving the loss of a child, partner, parent, sibling, friend, or petThe physical and emotional effects of griefNavigating difficult days such as holidays, anniversaries, and birthdaysHelping children cope with griefUnderstanding the grief recovery processWritten by two authors who have experienced it firsthand, this book has offered solace to over one-hundred fifty-thousand people, ranging from seniors to teenagers and from the newly bereaved to those who lost a loved one years ago. An exploration of unexpected death and its role in the cycle of life, I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye provides those people coping with grief with a rock-steady anchor from which to weather the storm of pain and begin to rebuild their lives.For further step-by-step support, the I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye Companion Workbook offers a combination of self-exploration questions, visualization activities, and journaling to help readers through the grieving process.Praise for I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye:"I highly recommend this book, not only to the bereaved, but to friends and counselors as well."― Helen Fitzgerald, author of The Grieving Child, The Mourning Handbook, and The Grieving Teen"This book, by women who have done their homework on grief... can hold a hand and comfort a soul through grief's wilderness. Outstanding references of where to see other help."― George C. Kandle, Pastoral Psychologist"Finally, you have found a friend who can not only explain what has just occurred, but can take you by the hand and lead you to a place of healing and personal growth…this guide can help you survive and cope, but even more importantly... heal."― The Rebecca Review"For those dealing with the loss of a loved one, or for those who want to help someone who is, this is a highly recommended read."―Midwest Book ReviewNamed a Best Book on Losing a Parent for 2022 by Choosing Therapy.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to re-entry into “normal” life—from the author of the Life, Interrupted column in The New York Times. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Rumpus, She Reads, Library Journal, Booklist • “I was immersed for the whole ride and would follow Jaouad anywhere. . . . Her writing restores the moon, lights the way as we learn to endure the unknown.”—Chanel Miller, The New York Times Book Review “Beautifully crafted . . . affecting . . . a transformative read . . . Jaouad’s insights about the self, connectedness, uncertainty and time speak to all of us.”—The Washington Post In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.. It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.. When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.. How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked—with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt—on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.

A Grief Observed is a classic work on grief that delves into the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the midst of loss. C.S. Lewis's honest reflection on his wife's tragic death is an unflinchingly truthful account of how loss can lead even a stalwart believer to lose all sense of meaning in the universe. This inspirational tale of how he can possibly regain his bearings is a beautiful and unflinchingly honest record of how even a stalwart believer can lose all sense of meaning in the universe. A must-read for anyone dealing with grief and loss.

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy? When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come."We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." --Randy Pausch