Product Description
Johnny Gunther was only seventeen years old when he died of a brain tumor. During the months of his illness, everyone near him was unforgettably impressed by his level-headed courage, his wit and quiet friendliness, and, above all, his unfaltering patience through times of despair. This deeply moving book is a father's memoir of a brave, intelligent, and spirited boy.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 127 reviews)

A must read for all parents... by Tiffany Smith-Ramirez (Manassas, VA United States)

5 Stars
October 07, 2009
This book is a beautiful and bittersweet reminder to love our children. Appreciate every moment we have with them, because you never know... I think I remember seeing this movie as a child, but I forgot about it until my son picked the book out for me at the library... it's been a while now since I've read it, but the story stirs something in me, like I just finished reading it. Remembering certain chapters still brings tears to my eyes. This book will break your heart and remind you to love life, even with all its wabi sabi shabbiness... it's still beautiful. Love your baby boys... even after they throw the Wii controller through the flat screen... :)- Okay... Especially then!

An Emotional Memoir That Keeps Its Focus by C. Monte (San Jose)

3 Stars
July 27, 2009
Death Be Not Proud was a fairly easy read for me, but for someone who has experienced the illness or death of a child, it might not be. Gunther managed to create the perfect balance of fact and memoir, rendering this a believable, but not maudlin, journey through the experience of his young son's battle and loss to brain cancer. Even though this particular battle was lost, what I took away from the book was how brilliant our health care system is, and how our medical knowledge is constantly inventing itself, and has been, as evidenced even during the far-away 1940s of the book. I recommend reading Death Be Not Proud including that perspective: how fast, and with how many treatment modalities were the Gunthers able to try to save Johnny? Today as our health care options are under attack, I recommend this book to anyone who favors competition, innovation and humanity.

An Unforgettable Book

5 Stars
June 19, 2009
I read Death Be Not Proud months ago, and yet i still think about it often. This book really affected me. From the beginning, you know Johnny will not survive the brain tumor. Still, I found myself cheering for his recovery all the way up until the end. Some may find this book sad or depressing because it surrounds death so much, but it actuality this book is rather uplifting. It teaches you how to always remain hopeful, even in the worst of situations. Through-out this book you will get angry, laugh, and maybe even cry, but it will leave an impression on you that you will never forget.

An Unforgettable Book

Stirring Tribute to a Son by Stacey @ Tree, Root, and Twig (Houston Metro, TX)

4 Stars
November 04, 2008
Death Be Not Proud is a memoir of the brief and profound life of John Gunther, Jr, written by his father, noted journalist and author John Gunther. It is discovered that John Jr - Johnny - has a malignant brain tumor at just 16 years old. He and his parents learn all they can, wrestle with the medical community, try alternative procedures, fight with all their might, but most importantly, they continue to LIVE, until the tumor finally claims Johnny's life just one year later. I enjoyed learning about the surprising personality of Johnny. For a teenager, he was remarkably intelligent and aware. His father sings his praises so poignantly, almost as if Johnny were an angel in flesh. I loved the story about Johnny writing to Albert Einstein, and about Einstein's response! There were moments when I wondered at the reality of the portrait John Sr paints of his son and how he and his parents handled the illness. There is an almost too-perfect quality to their steadfastness and their courage. I have never been in the position of losing a child to a horrible illness, but I guess that I would not always handle things with such grace. As their story continues, though, John Sr concedes that things occasionally got "messy," that there were complaints and regrets and "why me"s. That only made them more human to me. At the end of the book, after Johnny's death, John Sr gives Johnny's mother her chance to speak. What she writes is so totally heartbreaking, and beautiful at the same time. She says that if there were anything she could have changed, she would have LOVED JOHNNY MORE. She says that of course they loved him, and that he knew it, but she would have loved him even more. She exhorted parents with children still living to LOVE THEIR CHILDREN MORE. Of course children can cause exhaustion and sometimes exacerbation, but despite any trouble, we have the privilege of a living child, and we ought to love them more.

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