"An anatomy of human life, vividly illustrated. . . . Awe-inspiring
[and] sublimely uplifting".
--Time
Having won the National Book Award for "How We Die", his best-selling
inquiry into the causes and modes of death, Sherwin Nuland now turns his
attention to the miraculous resiliency of human life. For this lucid,
wonderful, and wonder-filled new book explores the body's mysterious
capacity to marshal disparate organs and processes in the interests of
survival.
Like its predecessor, "How We Live" is filled with gripping medical case
histories: a woman is pulled back from the brink of death from
inexplicable internal bleeding; another patient triumphs over breast
cancer; the "routine" removal of a polyp triggers a nearly lethal
medical crisis. For Nuland, each of these cases serves to illustrate the
extraordinary responsiveness and adaptability of the human organism. We
learn how the aorta's baroreceptors monitor blood pressure and respond
to its minutest fluctuations. We follow the intricate chain of
electrochemical command that makes us leap out of the path of a speeding
car. We discover why the stomach--which is capable of breaking down
everything from porridge to pizza--refrains from digesting itself.
Informed by sympathy for human suffering and an erudition that includes
poetry and the Talmud as well as the medical canon, "How We Live" is
science writing of the rarest kind--lucid, poetic, and genuinely
uplifting.
Originally published under the title "The Wisdom of the Body"
