Quest: The Life and Death of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (Mass Market Paperback)

~ Derek Gill (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 355 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (May 12, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345300947
• ISBN-13: 978-0345300942
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,719,617 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gives insights into a remarkable and powerful leader, October 15, 1998

By	[e-mail] (near Cleveland, OH 44254) - See all my reviews

This complex woman is accurately documented in this wonderful book. The section on her war years are haunting and inspiring. No one will forget Elisabeth if they read this book. When does the movie come out? Linda Schiller-Hanna

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb, dramatic and detailed biography of a fascinating woman, September 12, 2009

By	mianfei - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quest : The Life of Elisabeth KUbler-Ross (Hardcover)

Derek Gill's "Quest - The Life of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross" is a most impressive look at the life of this influential twentieth-century physician/psychiatrist from her early days as one of three triplets in Meilen to her fame as a psychiatrist during the 1970s.

Whereas many biographies (like Isaac Deutcher's of Stalin) only seriously look at the subject after becoming famous, in "Quest - The Life of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross" Gill manages to provide exceptional detail from the beginning of her childhood right through her youth and her work as a doctor. In the process, the knowledge one gains of her family background and of the nature of the 1920s Switzerland she grew up in is most impressive. The manner in which Gill is able to trace Elisabeth's experience from being rejected by her father for refusing to join his business is especially well-done. The subsequent chapters which show the beginning of the career for which Elisabeth was to achieve fame are equally well-done: the part where she hurt her hand during laboratory work is quite scary but very revealing about the way she approached life, especially how it contrasted with the typical "culture of hard work" of Switzerland. The same could be said of the time when her father - whose stubborness Gill shows Elisabeth to have inherited in a way unknown to his other children - refused to open the door for her. The same dramatic sense can be seen in the way she ignored one subject during her Mature examination.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross characteristic highly emotional personality is a consistent theme throughout "Quest": perhaps it is a factor in making this such an interesting book, as is the way in which she was used to working rapidly and with little concern for practicality: a trait that rarely endeared her to teachers. Her attraction to fellow student Manny Ross is also detailed very well - at times overshadowing her studies completely, but not in a manner that detracts from the book.

As "Quest - The Life of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross" moves at a very well-timed pace it allows the reader to absorb her life with more ease than most readers are likely to expect. Already by the time Elisabeth was twenty, the reader will be able to understand not only how she became a doctor, but also how she obtained the convictions she was later to elaborate in her well-known books. Derek Gill also does a most impressive job at recounting almost every major event in Elisabeth's life that the most curious of readers could wish to know.

All in all, this is a really good biography that anybody interested in Elisabeth Kubler-Ross will find interesting. Those who have read her books would particularly benefit.