Better

Riveting accounts of medical failure and triumph, and how success is achieved in a complex and risk-filled profession

The struggle to perform well is universal, and nowhere is the drive to do better more important than in medicine, where lives are on the line with every decision. In his new book, Atul Gawande explores how doctors strive to close the gap between best intentions and best performance in the face of obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable.

Gawande’s gripping stories of diligence and ingenuity take us to battlefield surgical tents in Iraq, delivery rooms in Boston, a polio outbreak in India, and malpractice courtrooms in the US. He discusses the ethical dilemmas of doctors’ participation in lethal injections, examines the influence of money on modern medicine, and recounts the contentious history of hand washing. And as in all his writing, Gawande gives us an inside look at his own life as a surgeon, offering a firsthand account of work in a field where mistakes are both unavoidable and unthinkable.