Atul Gawande offers a gripping exploration of how doctors strive to close the gap between best intentions and best performance in the face of sometimes insurmountable obstacles. Gawande's vivid stories take us to battlefield surgical tents in Iraq, to delivery rooms in Boston, to a polio outbreak in India, and to malpractice courtrooms around the country. Offering a searingly honest account of a field where mistakes are both unavoidable and unthinkable, Better provides rare insight into the elements of success that illuminates every area of human endeavor.
Gawande, a surgeon and writer, mixes facts and storytelling to describe ways to better the medical profession. He opens with a question: "What does it take to be good at something in which failure is so easy?" His curiosity leads to thoughtful investigation, interviews, and reflection. Gawande's scope is broad and candid. He covers health changes related to hand-washing, changes in medicine in the Iraq War, questions faced by doctors attending executions, his own awkwardness with patients' undressing, and improvements made by honest evaluation in treating cystic fibrosis. John Bedford Lloyd's deep, rich voice delivers just the mix we look for in doctors--knowledgeable, authoritarian tones mixed with the warm, comforting style that characterizes a great bedside manner. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
About the Author
Atul Gawande, a staff writer on medicine and science for The New Yorker, is a general surgeon at the Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. He was a 2006 recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant.” His first book, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award. Gawande lives with his wife and three children in Newton, Massachusetts.
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