Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

2002 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction "No one writes about medicine as a human subject as well as Atul Gawande. His stories about becoming a surgeon are scary, funny, absorbing....Complications is a uniquely soulful book about the science of mending bodies." --Adam Gopnik, author of Paris to the Moon In gripping accounts of true cases, surgeon Atul Gawande explores the power and the limits of medicine, offering an unflinching view from the scalpel's edge. This book is exploratory surgery on medicine itself, laying bare a science not in its idealized form but as it actually is--uncertain, perplexing, and profoundly human. In dramatic and revealing stories of patients and doctors, he explores how deadly mistakes occur and why good surgeons go bad. At once tough-minded and humane, Complications is a new kind of medical writing, nuanced and lucid, unafraid to confront the conflicts and uncertainties that lie at the heart of modern medicine, yet always alive to the possibilities of wisdom in this extraordinary endeavor.

Author:

Atul Gawande

Publisher:

Picador

Publication Date:

April 01, 2003

Number of pages:

269 pages

Language:

English

Binding:

Paperback

ISBN-10:

0312421702

ISBN-13:

9780312421700