Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.
Few of the great stories of medicine are as palpably dramatic as the advent of open-heart surgery, yet until now no journalist has ever brought to life all of the thrilling specifics of this triumph. G. Wayne Miller, the acclaimed author of Toy Wars and The Work of Human Hands, tells the story of Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, who, along with colleagues at University Hospital in Minneapolis and a small band of pioneers elsewhere, accomplished what many experts considered to be an impossible feat: he opened the heart, repaired fatal defects, and made the miraculous routine.
Miller draws on archival research and exclusive interviews with Lillehei and legendary pioneers such as Christian Barnard, taking readers into the lives of these doctors and their patients as they progress toward their landmark achievement |
