In My Time of Dying Audiobook By Sebastian Junger cover art

In My Time of Dying

How I Came Face to Face With the Idea of an Afterlife

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection of titles.
Yours as long as you’re a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for $8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

In My Time of Dying

By: Sebastian Junger
Narrated by: Sebastian Junger
Try Standard free

$8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $18.74

Buy for $18.74

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A near-fatal health emergency leads to this powerful reflection on death—and what might follow—by the bestselling author of Tribe and The Perfect Storm.

For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon at the New England home he shared with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away. As blackness encroached, he was visited by his dead father, inviting Junger to join him. “It’s okay,” his father said. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I’ll take care of you.” That was the last thing Junger remembered until he came to the next day when he was told he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm that he should not have survived.

This experience spurred Junger—a confirmed atheist raised by his physicist father to respect the empirical—to undertake a scientific, philosophical, and deeply personal examination of mortality and what happens after we die. How do we begin to process the brutal fact that any of us might perish unexpectedly on what begins as an ordinary day? How do we grapple with phenomena that science may be unable to explain? And what happens to a person, emotionally and spiritually, when forced to reckon with such existential questions?

In My Time of Dying is part medical drama, part searing autobiography, and part rational inquiry into the ultimate unknowable mystery.

Accolades & Awards

Editors Select
Biographies & Memoirs Editors Select Mental Health Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Thought-Provoking Science & Religion Religious Studies Eschatology Sociology

Interview: "In My Time of Dying" is an atheist’s exploration of the idea of an afterlife

In My Time of Dying
'I was imagining that I made it home from the hospital and this was all a dying hallucination.'
-0.00
  • In My Time of Dying
  • 'I was imagining that I made it home from the hospital and this was all a dying hallucination.'

Editorial Review

A peek beyond the veil
The idea of an afterlife has long been the domain of either religion or the New Agey, crystal-collecting corners of culture. I subscribe to neither, but as a human who is going to die someday, I’m naturally curious about what that will entail. And the mere pinprick of a possibility that it’s not a sheer cliff drop into nothingness is a comfort. So I was excited to see a writer of Sebastian Junger’s caliber take this question on in the wake of his own near-death experience, in which he was visited by his dead father. As a war reporter, Junger has danced around mortality his whole career, but this, he says, was the first time he confronted death on its terms. That he narrates this highly personal and profound story himself makes it all the more engrossing. Dipping between memoir, biology, history, and, yes, quantum physics, it didn’t give me any definitive answers on where my soul is headed—but it sure enriched it. — Phoebe N., Audible Editor

Thought-provoking Exploration • Fascinating Scientific Insights • Excellent Narration • Personal Vulnerability

Highly rated for:

All stars
Most relevant
It is obvious the Junger did a Great deal of research- I especially enjoyed his discussions on Quantum Physics.

Wonderful and heartfelt Explanation of a Near Death Experience

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
this was beautiful and written in a balanced way between the two unknowns...religious and scientific views. Still resonating days later

Such a balance

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
While I reach different conclusions than the Junger, who is an atheist, his book does not flinch from asking questions about transcendence and metaphysics.

Beautiful, haunting, and thoughtful.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I was enchanted by the mixture of almost hallucinogenic narrative, combined with stark detailed analysis of physics, Medicine, the personal journey of nearly dying. I’m not a big reader of nonfiction, but I couldn’t put it down.

Mesmerizing exploration of consciousness, physics, medicine

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Sincerity humility. Willing to talk about quantum physics to the unschooled. Sharing other people’s experiences.

Willing to not know

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews