In the 1970s, most people died swiftly and brutally: of heart attacks, strokes, cancer, or in accidents. But in the past three decades, medical advances have extended our lives and changed the way we die. In Last Rights, Stephen P. Kiernan reveals the disconnect between how patients want to live the end of life - pain free, functioning mentally and physically, surrounded by family and friends - and how the medical system continues to trial the dying - with extreme interventions, at immense costs, and with little regard to pain, human comforts, of even the stated wishes of patients and families.Backed with surveys, interviews, and intimate portraits of people from all walks of life, this book will be for our time what Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's books were for a previous generation.