How We Live
Click to look inside
World of Books
The feel-good place to buy books
How We Live by Sherwin B Nuland
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
Sherwin Nuland, M.D., is the author of bestselling nonfiction titles including How We Die, for which he won the National Book Award. He is clinical professor of surgery at Yale University, where he also teaches medical history and bioethics.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780679781400 |
| ISBN 10 | 0679781404 |
| Title | How We Live |
| Author | Sherwin B Nuland |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Random House USA Inc |
| Year published | 1998-05-26 |
| Number of pages | 432 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |