- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
In this passage, Gawande emphasizes some of the consequences of our medical progress and resulting increased longevity. While modern medicine and public health has given the majority of people much longer and healthier lives, it has also produced some unfortunate side effects. Primarily, it has bolstered our denial of death and our embarrassment over the last period of our lives. Particularly, it has enabled widespread fantasy—like the 97-year-old marathon runner that Gawande depicts here—about what the last phase of our lives might look like.
Yet this chapter, and the book as a whole, illustrates that most people will not achieve…