Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create accountLimited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks when you make the switch!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Make the switchGift audiobook credit bundles
You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.
Start giftingThe Day I Die
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreIn this groundbreaking book, Anita Hannig brings us into the lives of ordinary Americans who go to extraordinary lengths to set the terms of their own death. Faced with a terminal diagnosis and unbearable suffering, they decide to seek medical assistance in dying—a legal option now available to one in five Americans.
Drawing on five years of research on the frontlines of assisted dying, Hannig unearths the uniquely personal narratives masked by a polarized national debate. Among them are Ken, a ninety-year-old blues musician who invites his family to his death, dons his best clothes, and goes out singing; Derianna, a retired nurse and midwife who treks through Oregon and Washington to guide dying patients across life's threshold; and Bruce, a scrappy activist with Parkinson's disease who fights to expand access to the law, not knowing he would soon, in an unexpected twist of fate, become eligible himself.
The Day I Die tackles one of the most urgent social issues of our time: how to restore dignity and meaning to the dying process in the age of high-tech medicine. Meticulously researched and compassionately rendered, the book exposes the legal restrictions, barriers to access, and corrosive cultural stigma that can undermine someone's quest for an assisted death—and why they persist in achieving the departure they desire.
Anita Hannig is associate professor of anthropology at Brandeis University, where she teaches classes on medicine, religion, gender, and death and dying. She is also the author of Beyond Surgery: Injury, Healing, and Religion at an Ethiopian Hospital.
Linda Jones is an award-winning narrator and NYC actor with a penchant for dark edges and curious truths. Weaned on du Maurier and Hitchcock, Kafka and Poe-tales of mystery, adventure, and intrigue spawned a decades-long career with writers in new work, development, and narration. She has narrated for Penguin Random House, Recorded Books, Audible Studios, and Dreamscape, as well as a variety of independent authors and publishers. She has a BFA from Ithaca College. She lives in Brooklyn with writer John C. Foster and their dog, Coraline, in an apartment filled-to-bursting, floor-to-ceiling, corner-to-absolute-corner with books.