Category: Memoir Publisher: Carrel Books New York
ISBN-10: 1631440667
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 256
Copyright: 2017
ISBN-13: 9781631440663
Price: $30.00 (eBook)
Derek Humphry is regarded as the grand old man of the euthanasia movement in which he remains deeply engaged.
This memoir is also hugely about Derek's whole life.
2022 - this memoir is now on Kindle for $2.
Signed copy for $10 + $9 shipping at
https://www.finalexit.org/ergo-store
For nearly four decades, Derek Humphry has blazed a trail for the right-to-die movement. He founded the Hemlock Society, pioneered Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, and wrote the best selling books Final Exit (more than one million copies sold, and a New York Times bestseller for eighteen weeks) and Jean's Way ( United Kingdom bestseller). But before his wife's terminal illness ravaged his life, Humphry was merely a successful journalist. In Good Life, Good Death, readers will learn how the twists and turns of fate led him to his life's purpose.
Despite my name being on the top of every other page, the reviewer. spells my name wrongly throughout. It is HUMPHRY without an e.
Also, my book reports that I left the LA Times in l980 and LA in l986. Otherwise a fair review. Thanks....Derek Humphry
Reviewed by Irwin Leiter
2/28/2018
Good Life, Good Death Death
By Derek Humphrey
The topic of suicide has always been kept behind a shroud both at home and in public. Enter Derek Humphrey, the dean of the euthanasia movement in the United States. He is the author of many books on the subject, the most popular being Final Exit, a how to guide to ending, as he would say, a “Good Life’ by a “Good Death,” being assisted suicide by one’s own hand in a terminally ill situation, without pain and suffering. Hence his memoir, Good Life, Good Death.
Starting slowly as memoirs do, he clearly chronicles his young life in England as an impoverished youth from a broken home to becoming a prominent journalist. Euthanasia seemed the farthest thing from his mind until his first wife Jean had terminal cancer. But they had made a pact that if there was no hope and interminable suffering, he would act by furnishing her, and this is key, the means to end her own life, pills in this case.
Thereafter, Humphrey, now a journalist in Los Angeles, faced a decision, continue as a journalist or plunge into the task of leading the Hemlock Society he founded. To Humphrey, there simply was no choice. What follows is a very intricate history of how not only his organization but all euthanasia groups at home and abroad began to grow in the late 70’s. There was obviously a tidal wave of opposition from the clergy, lawmakers and the public, but Humphrey describes how he and his colleagues persevered and assisted suicide laws passed in some form in several western states and in other countries.
Notwithstanding painfully slow progress, Humphrey, in his 80’s, still lumbers on for the cause today, but a better history of the movement since his involvement you will not find elsewhere.
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