Charles R. Morris - The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center

The Surgeons

An ambitious account of the complicated interplay among health care economics, policy and those individuals whose professional lives drive the medical system. Morris fully immerses himself, and the reader, in the complexities of health care. In the final chapters of the book, Morris steps back, superimposing his clinical observations upon the larger issues of health care policy and economics. His chapter on the controversies surrounding aprotinin, an antibleeding agent often used in cardiac surgery, is particularly impressive. What ultimately brings clarity to this bookand hope for health care reformare the stories Morris delivers along the way.

Pauline W. Chen, New York Times Book Review

The stories are insightful and filled with verve. There is the electrifying late-night harvest run to secure a donor heart, the day-today frenzy of a heart surgeon in training, and the poignant death of a child from a failed heart transplant. (The entire kit of marvels mustered by cardiologists and surgeons in three states had not been up to the task of saving her.)

Wall Street Journal

By embedding himself in a frontline unit, Charles Morris has captured the real-life stories of cardiac surgeons and their patients. Told with the drama and pace of television fiction, this book offers an unprecedented look at the surgeons who hold our hearts in their hands.

Paul Offit, author of Vaccinated: One Mans

Quest to Defeat the Worlds Deadliest Diseases

Poignant and extraordinary.

Herald (Glasgow)

Charles Morris has written an astute book of enormous importance: an inside look at cardiac surgery as done in a great university medical center, written by an outsider so keenly observant, of such understanding and perceptiveness, that he has earned the frank trust and cooperation of the very surgeons whose work he scrutinizes with such perceptive eyes and ears. This is a book worthy to take its place alongside the works of such physicians as Jerome Groopman and Atul Gawande, and such social scientists as Renee Fox and Charles Bosk.

Sherwin Nuland, author of The Art of Aging:

A Doctors Prescription for Well-Being

[Morris] writes like the best professor you ever hadno dumbing down, presenting complex material in an engaging manner with just the right story at just the right time. If the term public intellectual did not exist, it would have to be invented for Morris. The Surgeons takes on all the key issuesthe increasing costs of medical care, the differences between American medical care and that of other Western nations, suggestions for improving American medical care, the roles of the pharmaceutical industry and the F.D.A., the conflicts over the best way to test and measure drugs and medicines and hospitals. In unison with earlier public intellectuals now regarded as sagesGalen, Aristotle, MaimonidesMorris reminds us that good medicine can flourish only in a good society.

James R. Kelly, America

From detailing the workings of the hearts chambers and valves to the bald economics of cardiac surgeryMorris masterfully breaks down complex jargon, procedures and policies for a lay audience.

Publishers Weekly

The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash A New York Times Bestseller

How we got into the mess were in, explained briefly and brilliantly.

New York Times Book Review , Editors Choice

An absolutely excellent narrative of the horror that we have in the credit markets right now.

Paul Steiger

The first big book on the credit crunch. This provocative book isa well-aimed opening shot in a debate that will only grow louder in coming months.

Economist

The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy

Engaging and credible.

Washington Post

Makes the reader feel like a time traveler plopped down among men both vicious and visionary. Looks back with clarity at the Big Bang of the American boom.

Christian Science Monitor

The Cost of Good Intentions: New York City and the Liberal Experiment, 19601975

This is the most complete, lucid, and thoughtful chronicle yet written about the citys fiscal crisis. But by tracing what city officials thought was happening, as well as what was really happening, Mr. Morris has produced something more, a meticulous case study of good intentions gone awry.

Steve Weisman, New York Times Book Review