Eleanor Clift
Basic Books
ISBN: 046500251X

Author and Newsweek contributing editor Eleanor Clift tackles one of the most important issues facing the modern world: how we deal, or fail to deal, with dying. She provides a very personal narrative as she alternates between the much-publicized death of Terri Schiavo and that of her own husband.

What has become known as the Schiavo affair—the death of a brain-damaged woman in Florida in 2005, and the controversy that surrounded it—was a revelatory moment in American society. For the fi rst time, the nation got a clear view of both the fanaticism gripping the religious right and the political power it could bring to bear even when the vast majority of the country disagreed with it. But it was also a turning point: a moment when America seemed to glimpse a dangerous radicalism, and began to pull back. Eleanor Clift witnessed this event from a unique vantage point. At the same time that Schiavo was dying in her Florida hospice, Clift’s husband, Tom Brazaitis, was dying of cancer at home; the two passed away within a day of each other. Two Weeks of Life alternates between these two stories to provide a moving commentary on how we deal, or fail to deal, with dying.