Creatures of a Day

What makes life worth living? What can we do to lead meaningful lives? And how do we confront our inevitable end? In his long career, eminent psychotherapist and author Irvin Yalom has pressed his patients and readers to grapple with life's two greatest challenges: that we all must die, and that each of us is responsible for leading a life worth living. In Creatures of a Day, he and his patients face the difficulty of these challenges. Although these people have come to Yalom seeking relief, recognition, or meaning, he and they discover that such things are rarely found in the places where we think to look. Like Love's Executioner and Yalom's other writing, Creatures of a Day provides an intelligent, compassionate, yet still unflinching look at the human soul and all the pain, confusion, and hope that go with it. The power of these stories is amplified by Yalom's reflections on his own life as he reckons with its inevitable end. Suffused with humor, great artistry, and a profound humanity, Creatures of a Day lays bare the necessary task we each face, each day, to make our own lives meaningful.

Irvin D Yalom is an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and a psychiatrist in private practice in San Francisco. He is the author of many books, including Love's Executioner, The Gift of Therapy, Momma and the Meaning of Life and Staring at the Sun.

Poignant and beautiful insights from a wise therapist looking back on a career, a therapist who happens to be a writer I greatly admire - Creatures of a Day is just what the Doctor ordered! Abraham Verghese, author of CUTTING FOR STONE Dr. Yalom has written a magical book. Anyone who has ever thought about his or her own aging or mortality will love this book. The result will be that of meeting, up close, a truly wise man, a really kind man, and of feeling deeply understood George Vaillant, Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard University, and author of Triumphs of Experience and Aging Well Irvin Yalom has produced a book of such piercing depth that to enter into it is transformative. You feel less like you are reading Creatures of a Day than that it is reading you. Only a handful of books can accomplish such a feat. Give praise that one more has entered this rare and precious list Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, McArthur Fellow and author of Plato at the Googleplex and Betraying Spinoza I've been a deep admirer of I