Book Review 8/28/2007 Tony Lawrence

Better by Atul Gawande

(Amazon Link)

I had read a chapter of this book in the New Yorker last year (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/09/061009fa_fact) and another two years earlier (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/12/06/041206fa_fact), so I was looking forward to reading this.

It did not disappoint, though I think I would have arranged the chapters here differently; I had a hard time getting into this just because the first three chapters just were not as interesting or even as well written as the rest. I could have skipped those entirely and not have missed much.

The subtitle is also a little odd: "A Surgeon's Notes on Performance". I suppose he had to tie these disparate stories together under some rubric, but I don't think they all fit well. That's unimportant: the chapters may not be strongly related, but they are worth reading. I found the rest of the chapters compelling, especially so "The Doctors of the Death Chamber" and "What Doctors Owe". The first examines the morality of doctors and executions, the second is about why and how doctors get sued.

The most disappointing chapter was the one on health care. Gawande touches on all the obvious problems, but doesn't seem to have an opinion on what should be done. I suppose that's not necessarily a fault: who does know how to "fix" this? But I do wish he'd gone into it more.

Overall, a very good book, informative and interesting.

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