Terry Gross

Diagnosed with cancer for the third time, Susan Sontag signed on for a harsh treatment regimen in hopes it would keep her alive. But it only added to her suffering. Her son, journalist David Rieff, has published a memoir about his mother's "revolt against death."

Historian Drew Gilpin Faust writes that Civil War deaths — both their number and their manner — transformed America. Her new book is This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.

Two million patients get bacterial infections from health-care workers each year. Nearly 100,000 of them die as a result. Dr. Richard Shannon argues that those infections — and deaths — are preventable.