Buy or borrow this book! Support your local independent bookseller
Find it in a WorldCat library
Compare prices at major online bookstores
|
|
Review by Michael Sims
Why are so many physicians excellent writers? Think of Lewis Thomas, Richard Selzer, Oliver Sacks, Richard Gordon, and Gerald Weissman. If you are already familiar with the wonderful books by Sherwin B. Nuland, he is already on your list. If not, he soon will be.
The titles of Nuland's books hint at his vast expertise in his field -- "Medicine: The Art of Healing," "The Origins of Anesthesia" and "Doctors: The Biography of Medicine." But it isn't alone his breadth and depth that make his writing so compelling. It is his insight, his compassion without sentimentality, his way of making the most subtle workings of the human body relevant to our experience of life.
Nuland's last book, the National Book Award-winning "How We Die" was a clear-eyed, unsentimental look at how and why the ecosystem in the body fails, and how we respond to that failure. It was praised by readers as diverse as Oprah Winfrey and William F. Buckley, Jr.
His new book, "The Wisdom of the Body," is about how, at any one moment, that complicated system is working relatively well for billions of people -- and about what that coordinated intricacy says about our natural history, about how we came to be what we are today. It is a celebration of the awe-inspiring capabilities of the body, but it isn't merely soft-focus, warm-fuzzy applause. Nuland is interested in celebrating the facts, not our beloved misconceptions or comforting myths.
Nuland writes from securely within his hard-earned expertise. He knows the human body inside and out, and knows as well the history of our discoveries about it. He may follow a gruesomely detailed account of emergency surgery with an anecdote about Greek attitudes toward epilepsy. With innumerable case histories at his fingertips, Nuland tends to give examples rather than generalize, which makes for a clearer understanding of each topic.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.