Books 1-3, Atul Gawande
Sep. 27th, 2010 07:45 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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50books_pocHi, everyone! I've been lurking here for a bit, browsing reviews and recommendations -- so many things to explore! To start this off, I got a bunch of books from the library all at once, and have been reading them over the past three weeks or so. I haven't really kept track of the order in which I've read them, so I thought that where I've read multiple books by the same author, I'd group those together.
I loved all three of Gawande's books, and would highly recommend them (and have been) to pretty much anyone I can think of. Each one draws on Gawande's experiences as a surgeon to allow him to probe the intricate interplay of human fallibility and modern knowledge, not just in medicine but in any truly complex human endeavor. What I loved about Gawande's writing in all three books was the combination of his very down-to-earth and even-handed take on the real-world situations he describes and his probing, intelligent, often very philosophical examinations of the patterns of cause-and-effect that they reveal.
The first book, "Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science," focuses on the ways in which modern medicine works and the ways in which it doesn't, and why. As I have something of a medical phobia, this one was the hardest for me to read, simply because it *does* focus on how (and how often) things go wrong. Ultimately, though, Gawande's writing was so compelling that it carried me past my own uneasiness and into the place of thoughtful, humane, and compassionate curiosity from which he observes and ponders the issues and stories he's discussing. Ultimately, he's writing less about medicine and more about the nature of being human in the modern, technologically and scientifically advanced world.
The second book,"Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance," focuses on the various strategies used in different medical contexts for overcoming problems. I think the most amazing part of this book was, to me, his discussion of medical care on the front lines, and how simply restructuring how care is thought of and delivered has improved treatment without the introduction of any new medical techniques.
I was a little unsure about what I'd think of the third book, "The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right," mostly because the title doesn't really make explicit that while Gawande examines more fields than just medicine, he is still presenting the same compelling stories that marked his earlier books. This book explores the notion that sometimes the best way to manage the most complex tasks is to use something extremely simple -- a checklist -- to keep track of critical tasks. In some ways, I found this to be my very favorite of the three books, simply because it's a little more applicable to the world outside of medicine, while losing none of the engaging thoughtfulness or storytelling of the first two books.
While I think these three books would all stand alone just fine, I found that reading them in order allowed each one to build on the previous one, just as Gawande's experiences have built as he's moved from one to the next.
I loved all three of Gawande's books, and would highly recommend them (and have been) to pretty much anyone I can think of. Each one draws on Gawande's experiences as a surgeon to allow him to probe the intricate interplay of human fallibility and modern knowledge, not just in medicine but in any truly complex human endeavor. What I loved about Gawande's writing in all three books was the combination of his very down-to-earth and even-handed take on the real-world situations he describes and his probing, intelligent, often very philosophical examinations of the patterns of cause-and-effect that they reveal.
The first book, "Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science," focuses on the ways in which modern medicine works and the ways in which it doesn't, and why. As I have something of a medical phobia, this one was the hardest for me to read, simply because it *does* focus on how (and how often) things go wrong. Ultimately, though, Gawande's writing was so compelling that it carried me past my own uneasiness and into the place of thoughtful, humane, and compassionate curiosity from which he observes and ponders the issues and stories he's discussing. Ultimately, he's writing less about medicine and more about the nature of being human in the modern, technologically and scientifically advanced world.
The second book,"Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance," focuses on the various strategies used in different medical contexts for overcoming problems. I think the most amazing part of this book was, to me, his discussion of medical care on the front lines, and how simply restructuring how care is thought of and delivered has improved treatment without the introduction of any new medical techniques.
I was a little unsure about what I'd think of the third book, "The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right," mostly because the title doesn't really make explicit that while Gawande examines more fields than just medicine, he is still presenting the same compelling stories that marked his earlier books. This book explores the notion that sometimes the best way to manage the most complex tasks is to use something extremely simple -- a checklist -- to keep track of critical tasks. In some ways, I found this to be my very favorite of the three books, simply because it's a little more applicable to the world outside of medicine, while losing none of the engaging thoughtfulness or storytelling of the first two books.
While I think these three books would all stand alone just fine, I found that reading them in order allowed each one to build on the previous one, just as Gawande's experiences have built as he's moved from one to the next.
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