A Second Act is structured around the stories of ten people who suffered cardiac arrest and survived

A Second Act is structured around the stories of ten people who suffered cardiac arrest and survived, among them a teenager struck by lightning, a new father who falls gravely ill with Covid , a mountaineer who freezes to death in the Dolomites, and a young woman who survived a suicide attempt.

The best way to be present in your life is to get your nose out of the books and live it.

The person we get to know best is Morgan , who interweaves his patients’ stories with his own, and shares insights from his career and his own reading.

Morgan ’s outlook is unfailingly compassionate and humane, but the book would have been richer perhaps more unexpected and challenging.

Matt Morgan's new book, A Second Act , is published by Simon & Schuster .

He says it contains a lot of wisdom, but Morgan adds a complication to the book's conclusions.

Could it be that the mechanisms that make us bad at learning to live well until it's too late are the same ones that help us endure life's inevitable tragedies?.