This is the best book I've read about getting old and dying. Which sounds depressing, and I suppose you could see it like that. But it's also stark cold reality, so why pretend it's not going to happen to every single one of us? Dr Atul Gawande takes us on a brilliant and deeply thoughtful journey through the last stages of our existence on this planet. Fair warning, though: as masterful as his writing is, though, "Being Mortal" is not an easy read. But it is an essential one. "For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens," Gawande writes. "And in stories, endings matter." This book also matters.