Coping and Beyond: Being a Surgeon's Reflections on Medicine, Science, Art, and a Life Worth Living

In these rich essays, a prominent member of the medical profession probes, with trained yet free-ranging thought and feeling, the world of human aspiration and foible, suffering and ecstasy. Cutting beneath the surface (though celebrating that too), he lays bare life's vital signs and responses in what is to be human, vulnerable, sick or well, in disarray or at peace, at zenith or nadir. The result is an astonishing wealth of nonclinical observations, musings, histories and anecdotes by a medical humanist who knows much more about us than our physiology.