Good Life, Good Death (Kindle Edition) [Kindle Edition]

Derek Humphry (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Good Life, Good Death
Memoir of how a writer became an euthanasia advocate

by Derek Humphry
Founder of the Hemlock Society
Author of Final Exit

19 chapters with photos
Paperback is version is 344 pages
Also available as a downloadable PDF eBook
Norris Lane Press

ISBN 0-9768283-3-2
ISBN 978-0-9768283-3-4

For more than 30 years Derek Humphry has trail-blazed the right to die movement in America and the world. He founded the Hemlock Society USA, pioneered the Oregon Death With Dignity Act and wrote the bestselling books Jean's Way and Final Exit. To know why he has maintained this struggle for choice in dying against powerful religious and political forces it is necessary to understand the whole man. In this candid memoir (a paperback and eBook original) he tells of his broken family, wartime experiences as a boy in England, and rising from the lowest to the highest rungs of journalism on two continents. He tells the moving story of his first wife's terminal cancer and her way of ending it by assisted suicide which later became the model for the Oregon law. Painful episodes from his second marriage and the much publicized divorce are frankly detailed. Today Derek Humphry is regarded as the grand old man of a euthanasia movement in which he remains deeply involved. A dual citizen of the USA and the UK, he has lived in Oregon for 22 years.

Good Life, Good Death is also available as a downloadable PDF eBook

See what the book is all about by viewing this sample"Good Life, Good Death' excerpt. PDF excerpt contains extract pages from the book including preface, introduction, and table of contents.

Product Details

• File Size: 386 KB
• Print Length: 191 pages
• Publisher: Norris Lane Press (August 17, 2009)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B002LZTRAQ
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #235,642 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #74 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( K ) > King, Martin Luther
  • #80 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Medicine > Physician & Patient > Medical Ethics
  • #80 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical > Medicine > Medical Ethics

More About the Author

Derek Humphry was born in Bath, England, 04.29.1930 and brought up in a broken family. Despite a poor education, further damaged by six years of war, Derek determined to become a writer. Starting as a newspaper messenger boy on the Yorkshire Post at 15, he worked his way up as a reporter on the Bristol Evening World, the Manchester Evening News to the London Daily Mail, the London Sunday Times and finally the Los Angeles Times.

Always an advocacy journalist, Derek wrote books on race relations, police corruption and a biography of Michael X. For 'Because They're Black' he won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize.

When the wife to whom he had been married for 22 years developed inoperable cancer, he nursed her for two years until she asked him to help her die. Close to the end, Jean chose to end her life with lethal drugs to avoid further suffering. In time, he married again and moved to America.

Derek published in l978 a little book Jean's Way describing Jean's final years and his part in helping her to die peacefully. It became a bestseller and was translated into major languages.

The public response to the book caused him to start the Hemlock Society USA in 1980 from his garage in Santa Monica. Hemlock's purpose was to help people in similar situations as Jean's and also to reform the laws to permit physician-assisted suicide.

Derek built Hemlock into a national organization, with 40,000 members and 80 chapters. In l991 he wrote 'Final Exit' - a 'how-to' book for the dying to bring their suffering to an end if they chose. To much surprise, it became a #1 bestseller within six months. It was translated into 12 languages. Random House keeps the 3rd edition of 'Final Exit' in print in 2010, and it is still in print in Spanish and Italian. USA TODAY in 2007 chose it as one of the most significant books of the past 25 years.

His latest book is a memoir --'Good Life, Good Death' -- covering 79 years of an eventful life -- ranging from an unusual childhood in a broken home, a father in prison, a mother who ran away to Australia, then experiencing an ugly war which started when he was nine. The book relates his remarkable experiences in journalism, outstanding interviews with famous people, and his struggle against racism. Derek immigrated to the USA at age 48.

The second half of the memoir deals with his impact on the right to die movement in America, starting and building the Hemlock Society for 12 years, and pioneering the Oregon Death With Dignity Act (l994), the first such physician-assisted suicide law in North America.

Proud to be a paperback writer, Derek has published 15 books in 40 years. Only two have been hardbacks.

Derek is president of the Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization (ERGO), chairman of the advisory board of the Final Exit Network (successor to the now defunct Hemlock Society), and an advisor to the World Federation of Right to Die Societies, of which he has been president.

Although unlettered himself, Derek has been a guest lecturer at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, USC, UCLA, University of Michigan, University of Chicago, and others.

In his book "A Merciful End: The Euthanasia Movement in Modern America,' Ian Dowbiggin
writes: "Humphry ranks as one of the preeminent pioneers of the American euthanasia movement." (OUP. 2003. Page 149). In their book 'Dying Right', the authors Daniel Hillyard and John Dombrink write: "Derek Humphry is widely acknowledged to be the initiatior of the euthanasia reform movement in the United States." (Routledge NY 2001. Page 82.)

A citizen of the USA and UK, he lived in Los Angeles l978-88 and since then in western Oregon. He has been married to Gretchen (nee Crocker) since l991.
[Update: 22 March 2010]