A Second Act

What Nearly Dying Teaches Us About Really Living

Matthew Morgan

$34.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Simon & Schuster
29 January 2025

Sociology: death & dying; Medicine

I’ve worked as an intensive care doctor for over twenty years, caring for patients who are in the thick fog between life and death. I’ve met hundreds of people who have died, were resuscitated and lived. I’ve long thought that these are the people that we should be listening to, not influencers or business gurus. They know what really matters.

It happened in an instant. Ed was walking through a park with his friend Stuart when there was a bang, a bright light and then nothing. Ed and Stuart had been hit by a bolt of lightning – 300 million volts, enough to power a city for a day, coursed through their bodies, short-circuiting their hearts. Ed was found first, given life-saving CPR to start his heart again, and he survived and had a second chance. He lives life a little differently now, every day knowing the thin margins that separate life and death.

In this book, Dr Matt Morgan meets people whose hearts have stopped and have been brought back from clinical death. He shows us how doctors resuscitate people, the shadowy world of ICU, how you can learn to save a life.

We meet the patients who have experienced hypothermia, overdoses, cardiac arrests and a heart transplant and see how their lives have transformed and the lessons they want to share. Along the way, Morgan has his own realisations about his life, how to make the most of it and ensure that life is not wasted on the living.

By: Matthew Morgan
Imprint: Simon & Schuster
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: ANZ Only
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm,
ISBN: 9781398544499
ISBN 10: 1398544493
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 29 January 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Dr Matt Morgan is a British intensive care doctor. His open letter addressed to patients during the 2020 COVID pandemic has been read by over half a million people worldwide and viewed by over two million times after featuring on the Channel 4 news. His articles have featured in the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Sunday Mirror and Huffington Post. A regular writer for the internationally acclaimed British Medical Journal, his article 'A letter from the ICU' is one of their most popular ever opinion article, read by over 130,000 people in 2020. His first book, Critical, has been translated into four languages. He lives in Cardiff with his family, enjoys CrossFit, photography, cold beer and even colder ice cream.