Sherwin B Nuland

Nuland's book won a National Book Award and impacted the national debate about end-of-life care. He died on Monday at 83. Nuland spoke to Fresh Air in 1994.

Dr. Sherwin Nuland is a surgeon, and he teaches surgery and the history of medicine at Yale. In his new book, "How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter," (Knopf), he writes that few of us have an understanding of the way people die because 80 percent of Americans die in the hospital, and, for the most part their deaths are concealed. Nuland's new book is an attempt to "demythologize" the process of dying and he presents death in its biological and clinical reality.