Author Guide · Psychiatry & Death and Dying
Books Written by
In 1965 a Swiss-born psychiatrist at the University of Chicago began interviewing terminally ill patients in seminars attended by doctors, nurses and students, asking them what dying was like. At a time when many hospitals avoided telling patients they were dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross let them talk. The book that came out of those interviews, On Death and Dying (1969), set out five stages — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — and became a best-seller and a standard text for people who care for the dying. She went on to write more than twenty books, on dying children, on AIDS and, increasingly, on life after death. This guide covers her 11 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 11 key books · 1969–2005 · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote more than twenty books. The best known are On Death and Dying (1969), which introduced the five stages, her memoir The Wheel of Life (1997) and On Grief and Grieving (2005), written with David Kessler and published after her death. Start with On Death and Dying; the guide below shows which later books build on it and where her work turns to the afterlife.
Where to Start with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
If you want the book that started it all
→ On Death and Dying (1969) — the five stages, in the patients’ own words.
If you want her life story
→ The Wheel of Life (1997) — from a Swiss triplet to the University of Chicago and beyond.
If you are grieving someone
→ On Grief and Grieving (2005) — the five stages applied to the people left behind.
If you are caring for a dying child
→ On Children and Death (1983).
11 Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Books, in Order
On Death and Dying
Built from her interviews with terminally ill patients at the University of Chicago, the book sets out the five stages she observed in people facing death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. A Life magazine feature the same year raised her profile, and the book became a best-seller and a standard text for professionals working with the dying. A 50th anniversary edition appeared in 2019.
Questions and Answers on Death and Dying
A follow-up in question-and-answer form, drawn from the questions doctors, nurses, clergy, patients and families put to her at lectures and workshops after On Death and Dying: what to tell a dying patient, how to handle anger, and how families can prepare.
Death
A collection she edited, with essays by several contributors on how different cultures and religions approach death, alongside personal accounts from the dying and the people who cared for them. Her own chapters argue that facing death can make a life fuller rather than smaller.
To Live Until We Say Good-Bye
Text by Kübler-Ross and photographs by Mal Warshaw follow several terminally ill patients, adults and children, through their last months, many of them at home or in hospice care rather than in hospital.
Living with Death and Dying
A book for families and carers about the practical and emotional side of looking after someone who is dying, including the way dying patients, especially children, communicate what they know through drawings and symbolic language.
On Children and Death
Written for parents whose children are dying or have died, and for the people who support them. It covers long illness as well as sudden death, including accidents, suicide and murder, and how brothers and sisters grieve.
AIDS
Essays, patients’ stories and interviews from the early years of the AIDS epidemic, covering her failed attempt to open a hospice for babies with AIDS, care in gay communities, AIDS in prisons and official resistance to warnings. She frames the epidemic as a spiritual test for humanity; Publishers Weekly praised her call for compassion but found the book unfocused.
On Life After Death
A short book of her lectures on near-death experiences and what she believed happens after death, the subject that came to dominate her later work and that many scientists rejected.
The Wheel of Life
Her autobiography: a childhood in Switzerland as one of triplets, relief work in Poland and Germany after the Second World War, medical school and work as a country doctor, then America and the Chicago seminars. The second half covers her turn to the supernatural and spirit contact, her failed plan for a home for children with AIDS in rural Virginia, the fire that destroyed her house there, and life after a series of strokes.
Life Lessons
Written with the grief specialist David Kessler, the book collects what she and Kessler learned from dying patients about living: love, relationships, fear, anger, loss, time and happiness, each chapter built around the stories of particular people.
On Grief and Grieving
Her last book, written with David Kessler and published in 2005, the year after her death. It applies the five stages, first described for people who were dying, to the grief of those left behind, and stresses that the stages are not a fixed sequence.
In What Order to Read Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Her books do not form a series, so you can read by need. Publication order does show how her work changed: the first books are clinical and grounded in patient interviews; the middle books turn to children, home care and AIDS; from the late 1970s onwards the afterlife and near-death experiences take over.
Read On Death and Dying first, because almost everything later refers back to the five stages. If you are reading because of a loss rather than out of professional interest, go straight from there to On Grief and Grieving. Read On Life After Death knowing that its claims are not accepted by the medical science her early work helped change.
A reading path
1. On Death and Dying (1969)
2. Questions and Answers on Death and Dying (1974)
3. On Children and Death (1983)
4. The Wheel of Life (1997)
5. On Grief and Grieving (2005)
Everything Else Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Published
Beyond the 11 key books: 6 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Shorter books and later titles
6
6 books · 1979–2003
- 1979The Dougy Letter: A Letter to a Dying Childan illustrated letter to a dying child
- 1981Remember the Secreta children’s book
- 1982Working It Throughon her workshops for the dying and the grieving
- 1995Death Is of Vital Importancelectures, later revised as The Tunnel and the Light
- 1999The Tunnel and the Lightessential insights on living and dying
- 2003The Real Taste of Lifea photographic journal
The years · 1926–2004
Quick facts about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
- Known for
- Describing the five stages of dying and grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — and pushing medicine to talk honestly with dying patients.
- 1926
- Born in Zürich, one of triplets
- 1958
- Moves to the United States
- 1994
- Fire destroys her Virginia house
- 2004
- Dies in Scottsdale, Arizona
- Born
- 8 July 1926, Zürich, Switzerland; one of triplets
- Education
- Medical degree, University of Zürich, 1957
- Career
- Psychiatry training in New York; University of Chicago from 1965
- Married
- Emanuel “Manny” Ross, a fellow medical student, in 1958; two children
- Honours
- Named one of Time’s 100 most important thinkers of the century (1999)
- Archive
- Donated to Stanford Libraries by her family in 2019
- Died
- 24 August 2004, Scottsdale, Arizona, aged 78
The red mark is 1969: On Death and Dying, the book that introduced the five stages.
How Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Writes: Letting the Dying Speak
Her method started as a teaching seminar, not a theory. At the University of Chicago she interviewed terminally ill patients in front of doctors, nurses and students, then discussed with the group what they had heard. On Death and Dying keeps that structure: long passages of patients’ own words, followed by her commentary, and the five stages are drawn from those conversations rather than from experiments.
She writes plainly, for nurses, chaplains and families as much as for psychiatrists, and many of her books are practical: answers to the questions people asked at her lectures, advice for parents of dying children, letters and photo-essays. Critics have pointed out that the stages were never tested in controlled studies and that grief rarely follows them in order; in On Grief and Grieving she and David Kessler say themselves that the stages are not a fixed sequence.
From the late 1970s her writing moves from the clinic to the spiritual. Near-death experiences, spirit guides and the conviction that death is a transition rather than an end shape On Life After Death and much of The Wheel of Life. Readers who come for the psychiatrist of On Death and Dying often find these later books a different kind of reading.
Watch
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in a 1983 Interview
In a 1983 interview produced by the University of Washington, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross discusses spirituality, death and dying, and the support people with terminal illness need. From the official Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation channel.
Frequently asked questions about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s books
How many books has Elisabeth Kübler-Ross written?
The Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation lists 24, several of them published only in German. This page covers her 11 key books, from On Death and Dying (1969) to On Grief and Grieving (2005), plus six shorter and later titles in the list above.
What are Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s books in order?
On Death and Dying (1969), Questions and Answers on Death and Dying (1974), Death: The Final Stage of Growth (1975), To Live Until We Say Good-Bye (1978), Living with Death and Dying (1981), On Children and Death (1983), AIDS: The Ultimate Challenge (1987), On Life After Death (1991), The Wheel of Life (1997), Life Lessons (2000) and On Grief and Grieving (2005).
Where should I start with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross?
With On Death and Dying (1969). Almost everything she wrote afterwards builds on the five stages it describes. If you have lost someone, follow it with On Grief and Grieving; for her life story, read The Wheel of Life.
What is Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s most famous book?
On Death and Dying (1969), based on her interviews with dying patients at the University of Chicago. It introduced the five stages — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — and became a best-seller and a standard text for people who work with the dying.
What are the five stages of grief?
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Kübler-Ross first described them in 1969 as stages in people who were themselves dying; they were later applied to grief and other kinds of loss, most fully in On Grief and Grieving (2005), written with David Kessler.
Are the five stages scientifically proven?
No. The model came from her clinical interviews, not from controlled research, and critics have questioned whether people really pass through set stages. On Grief and Grieving itself says the stages are not a fixed sequence and not everyone goes through all of them.
Why was Elisabeth Kübler-Ross controversial?
From the late 1970s she became interested in near-death experiences, out-of-body experiments and spirit guides, and was associated with Jay Barham, founder of the Church of the Facet of Divinity, who claimed to speak with spirits. That association and her afterlife claims damaged her reputation with many scientists. Her healing centres in California (1984) and Virginia (1994) both burned down; arson was suspected in both cases.
Is Elisabeth Kübler-Ross still alive?
No. She suffered a series of strokes in 1995 that left her partly paralysed, and died at her home in Scottsdale, Arizona, on 24 August 2004, aged 78. On Grief and Grieving was published the following year.
Is there a film about her?
Yes. Facing Death, a documentary about her by the Swiss director Stefan Haupt, drew large audiences in Switzerland in 2003, the year before she died.
Who is David Kessler?
A grief specialist who co-wrote her last two books, Life Lessons (2000) and On Grief and Grieving (2005).
Footnotes
- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross — Encyclopædia Britannica
- Books, chapters and papers — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation
- Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth 1926–2004 — Encyclopedia.com
- Swiss death expert dies aged 78 — Swissinfo, 2004
- The Wheel of Life — NYU Literature, Arts and Medicine Database
- AIDS: The Ultimate Challenge — Publishers Weekly
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.”
— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Death: The Final Stage of Growth (1975)
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations