A Heavy Case. Notes of a Surgeon

The book by Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon and well-known popularizer of science, is a brilliant, bold, and incredibly engaging narrative about the daily life of a doctor who deals with life and death every day, forced to make decisions sometimes in situations where science is unreliable, information is limited, and the stakes involve a person's life.

By sharing touching, poignant stories from his practice, the author candidly addresses serious problems and limitations of modern medicine, the mysteries of the human body, how good doctors become bad, the successes and failures in a surgeon's work, medical errors, and the joy of being able to save a patient's life.