- Title:
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The Trauma Chronicles
- Written by:
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Stephen Westaby
- Read by:
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Gordon Griffin
- Format:
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Unabridged CD Audio Book
- Number of CDs:
-
8
- Duration:
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9 hours 23 minutes
- Published:
-
March 02 2023
- Available Date:
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March 02 2023
- Age Category:
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Adult
- ISBN:
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9781038632715
- Genres:
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Non-fiction; Biography
- Publisher:
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Bolinda audio
Qty
Format
Price
Bolinda price
Following on from his two earlier bestselling works, Fragile Lives and The Knife's Edge, The Trauma Chronicles gives an unmissable insight into the world of one of the greatest living heart surgeons.
'Never, never, never give in'. Winston Churchill's famous quotation best sums up the life of Stephen Westaby, the world-leading cardiothoracic surgeon. This book chronicles the triumphs and failures of his surgical life, the lives saved and extended, the innovations he developed (such as artificial hearts) and his research discoveries.
Having spent his childhood in the backstreets of a northern steel town, he went on to become one of the world's foremost heart surgeons. His drive for perfection in his profession took him to the world-renowned Harefield Hospital, the foremost heart surgery centre in Birmingham, Alabama, and the newly-created Cardiothoracic Centre in Oxford. Then in 2019 in Wuhan, he was the first Western doctor to learn about COVID-19 before the virus was identified.
'Raw and moving ... the writing is thrilling. Fragile Lives is a frank and absorbing memoir by a man who has done about as much good to his fellow human beings as it is possible to do in one life time.'
The Times
'The book is a cracking example of a thriving sub-genre of autobiography, the medical memoir. Anyone who enjoyed the 2014 bestseller Do No Harm by the brain surgeon Henry Marsh, a friend of Westaby's, will relish Fragile Lives, too. Each story is gripping, written in a vivid, almost brutal way that matches the blood and gore of cardiac surgery.
Financial Times
'Westaby is everything you would hope from a maverick surgical genius: authoritative, engaged, passionate and opinionated. His book, annoyingly well written for someone who has penned only medical papers and handbooks, reads like a thriller, except with rather more corpses. You race to each chapter's end to see if his certain-to-die patient survives.'
The Times
'A full-frontal and thrilling portrayal. Each story in this fascinating book brings a new nail-biting surgical adventure … A gifted surgeon, Westaby is also a natural writer … Fragile Lives succeeds on many levels: political battle cry, chronicle of bloody feats, history of modern cardiology, tribute to patients and paean to surgery.'
The Daily Telegraph
'The stakes could not be higher in this bloody, muscular and adrenaline-charged memoir from a pioneering heart surgeon … at points it made my own heart race dangerously. ''Surgeons are meant to be objective,'' Westaby tells himself, ''not human''. What makes this book so fascinating, and so moving, is the terrible tension between these necessary qualities.'
The Sunday Times