Heart
A history
Popular Science, Memoir
Non-Fiction
Published by Oneworld
Sandeep Jauhar – cardiologist, bestselling author and New York Times columnist – beautifully weaves his own experiences with the defining discoveries of the past to tell the story of our most vital organ.
Sandeep Jauhar looks at some of the pioneers who risked their careers and their patients’ lives to better understand the heart. People like Daniel Hale Williams, who performed the world’s first documented heart surgery, and Wilson Greatbach, who accidentally invented the pacemaker.
Amid gripping scenes from the operating theatre, Jauhar tells stories about the patients he has treated. And he relates the moving tale of his family’s own history of heart problems, from his grandfather’s sudden death in India – an event that sparked his lifelong obsession with the heart – to the first ominous signs of his own mortality.
He also confronts the limits of medical technology and argues that future progress will be determined more by how we choose to live than by any device we invent.
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Reviews
“In this absorbing book about the vital organ that keeps us alive, Jauhar, a cardiologist, reveals why the heart can be damaged by emotional stress.”
“Cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar’s exploration of that marvellous muscle, the heart, meshes cutting-edge science, memoir and history… A moving narrative”
“Part-memoir, part-history of his medical specialty, Heart links the physical organ with the emotional one. Jauhar pairs engaging descriptions of how the heart works with tales of creativity and self-experimentation that enabled treatments for infarctions, arrhythmias and myopathies.”
