The Thing about Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - Weaving together personal anecdote, biological fact, philosophical doubt, cultural criticism, and the wisdom of an eclectic range of writers and thinkers, a book that expertly renders both a hilarious family portrait and a truly resonant meditation on mortality.

"Shields is a sharp-eyed, self-deprecating, at times hilarious writer."
--The Wall Street Journal

Mesmerized and somewhat unnerved by his 97-year-old father's vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an original investigation of our flesh-and-blood existence, our mortal being.

The Thing About Life provokes us to contemplate the brevity and radiance of our own sojourn on earth and challenges us to rearrange our thinking in crucial and unexpected ways.

Author: David Shields
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 02/10/2009
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.64lbs
Size: 8.05h x 5.22w x 0.79d
ISBN: 9780307387967

Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 03/01/2009 pg. 20

About the Author

DAVID SHIELDS is the author of eight previous books, including Black Planet: Facing Race during an NBA Season (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity (winner of the PEN/Revson Award), and Dead Languages: A Novel (winner of a PEN/Syndicated Fiction award). A senior editor of Conjunctions, Shields has published essays and stories in dozens of periodicals, including The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, Yale Review, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney's, and Believer. He teaches at the University of Washington and lives in Seattle with his wife and daughter.