Americans have long been fascinated by the personal lives of Hollywood celebrities and the over-hyped magic of plastic surgery. In this entertaining memoir, Dr. Norman Leaf, a highly respected plastic surgeon, reveals the complex and all-too-human connection that exists between these two worlds. In his thirty-five years practicing in Beverly Hills, California, Leaf has encountered the great and those aspiring to be great, seeing them in a different light than the general public. This uniqu...

From the front lines of modern medicine, Tell Me Where It Hurts is a fascinating insider portrait of a veterinarian, his furry patients, and the blend of old-fashioned instincts and cutting-edge technology that defines pet care in the twenty-first century.For anyone who’s ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at your veterinarian’s office, Tell Me Where It Hurts offers a vicarious journey through twenty-four intimate, eye-opening, heartrend...

An inspiring, surprising, sometimes shocking, and ultimately deeply informative memoir of the high-stakes, high-pressured life of a female heart surgeonDr. Kathy Magliato is one of the few female heart surgeons practicing in the world today. She is also a member of an even more exclusive group—those surgeons specially trained to perform heart transplants. Heart Matters is the story of the making of a surgeon who is also a wife and mother. In this powerful and moving memoir...

When I mention that I work in an emergency room, people usually say,Are you a nurse?Wow. That must be really hard.What's it like?This is what it's like to be an emergency doctor.That teenager puking up two liters of vodka and his stomach lining at triage? Yup. Blood pouring out of a terrified pregnant woman? Call me. And, of course, the patient who no longer has a nosebleed screaming at me across the depart...

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 MoonIn gripping accounts of true cases, surgeon Atul Gawande explores the power and the limits of medicine, offering an unflinchi...

To be a good nurse takes dedication, perseverance and patience.We are there to take care of the sick and nurture them back to good health.So what would you say to a little old man who asks you to squeeze his banana?Would you take him up on his offer?I would say, Let me have it.By the way, he only wants it peeled!It is questions like that, that are not that unusual coming from the patients that I care for everyday and some questions get much more creative, if you know what I mean?It...

“What a terrific book….[Weston] leaves you feeling that if push came to shove you’d want to be operated on by her.”—Nicholas Shakespeare, author of Bruce Chatwin: A BiographyThe continuing popularity of doctor shows on TV—from Scrubs, House, and Grey’s Anatomy to the television phenomenon ER—indicates a widespread fascination with all things medical. Direct Red, by practicing ear, nose, and throat surgical specialist Gabriel Weston, takes readers behind the scenes and into ...

I'm baaaaack.That's right. You can't keep the most unfeeling doctor in the world away.Was I always such a hard-hearted lass? Of course not. I offer you some counter-examples from medical school, a time when I was so earnest and hard-working, I scraped my finger on the mannequin while practicing my digital rectal exam technique (true story).Then I bring it into real time, swapping stories about the emergency room in the digital age, where Twitter co-exists with traum...

A memoir of reinvention after a stroke at age thirty-three.Christine Hyung-Oak Lee woke up with a headache on the morning of December 31, 2006. By that afternoon, she saw the world—quite literally—upside down. By New Year's Day, she was unable to form a coherent sentence. And after hours in the ER, days in the hospital, and multiple questions and tests, her doctors informed her that she had had a stroke.For months afterward, Lee outsourced her memories to a journal, taking ...

“As wise as it is well written. . . . A sustaining work of art.” —Linda Elisabeth Beattie, Courier-JournalIn this inspired anthology, doctors relate true stories from their professional lives, capturing disillusionments and triumphs encountered along the way. Essays by such distinguished writers as Peter D. Kramer, Kay Redfield Jamison, Danielle Ofri, Robert Coles, Lauren Slater, Sandeep Jauhar, and Perri Klass create a vivid mural of the medical world, from a student’s un...

Go behind the scenes of the OR in this "fact-filled, poignant, and funny" account by an anesthesiologist ( Booklist).Even patients who've spent time in the operating room don't really know much about them—thanks to the important work of anesthesiologists like Dr. Paul Whang. But here, he takes readers into the hospital and past the OR doors—fully alert.Combining personal stories with staff experiences, he reveals hidden truths about what goes on du...

Are women ruining medicine? Nah.Real life in the emergency lane, zeroing on body parts and chicks in scrubs.Just like Grey’s Anatomy, medicine with a little bit of sex.And, like Fifty Shades of Grey, a tiny bit of torture.