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Die Wise

A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul

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About this listen

 A fierce, lyrical manifesto that dares readers to face death without sentimentality—and reveals dying well as one of the deepest acts of living, loving, and human responsibility.

Die Wise does not offer seven steps for coping with death. It does not suggest ways to make dying easier. It pours no honey to make the medicine go down. Instead, with lyrical prose, deep wisdom, and stories from his two decades of working with dying people and their families, Stephen Jenkinson places death at the center of the page and asks us to behold it in all its painful beauty. Die Wise teaches the skills of dying, skills that have to be learned in the course of living deeply and well. Die Wise is for those who will fail to live forever.

Dying well, Jenkinson writes, is a right and responsibility of everyone. It is not a lifestyle option. It is a moral, political, and spiritual obligation each person owes their ancestors and their heirs. Die Wise dreams such a dream, and plots such an uprising. How we die, how we care for dying people, and how we carry our dead: this work makes our capacity for a village-mindedness, or breaks it.

Table of Contents
The Ordeal of a Managed Death
Stealing Meaning from Dying
The Tyrant Hope
The Quality of Life
Yes, But Not Like This
The Work
So Who Are the Dying to You?
Dying Facing Home
What Dying Asks of Us All
Kids
Ah, My Friend the Enemy Grief & Loss Personal Development Relationships Social Sciences Sociology Medicine Dream

What the critics say

“Stephen Jenkinson’s elegant and sorrow-freighted book brings prophetic insight rather than pastoral affirmations. A true story-man, Jenkinson paints image after image on the cave wall of his parchment. Die Wise is a formidable body of work, road-tested in ways most of us hope never to know about. Stay with it, hold the sorrow as the gift it is, savor in small, immense chunks. Every word is an invitation to trade fantasy for imagination. There isn’t a book like it.”
—Dr. Martin Shaw, author of Snowy Tower: Parzival and the Wet, Black Branch of Language
All stars
Most Relevant
if someone you know is dying, listen to this book and it will help you to understand death and how to guide us through grief and love. love and grief.

beautifully written prose to guide us

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Extraordinary in every way. It may change your life, and your death. Very highly recommended.

Extraordinary

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great book,interesting insights and a must for End of Life Practitioners for their sacred paths going forward.

very profound

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... I don't knohow to rate this book. when I found out about mr Jenkins I thought I had found a kindred spirit. his work is very inspiring. the book itself however is too spacey and preachy sounding to me. sort of ungrounded, like a priest, rambling. I will likely give it another try at some point bc the topic is close to my heart. but perhaps I will just be content knowing that we are traveling parallel paths ... but with a very different approach and feel.

it's like listening to your wise grandpa rambling ... for a very, very long time

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Agree w the authors message that modern Healthcare puts too much emphasis on doing everything possible to extend life without much thought into how to die well. I find the book rather tedious to get through however, with lots of repetition and challenging to make sense of what he's actually trying to say.

Important message, but very long-winded

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