A Second Act: What Nearly Dying Teaches Us About Really Living

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.

© 2025 Simon & Schuster Audio UK (Audiobook): 9781398532359

Release date

Audiobook: 16 January 2025