How We Live

Rating:
Summary: Do some proper wondering...
Review: "No matter how similar our parts to those of other animals, there are to be found within them some characteristics that make us uniquely human." (from the Introduction).
The human body.
We all have one. If you're reading this, you have one! What could be more interesting than finding out more about it? How it works? How it fails us at times? And "why" it does both?
Well, Dr. Nuland is an expert in this field, and his book about the human body is just fantastic, I was thoroughly enthralled by it, from cover to cover. Just when the textbook-style facts verged on becoming tedious, Nuland would sensitively lace (suture?) everything together with a true-to-life surgical story that not only drove home the facts, but kept me in suspense... flipping the pages like it was a novel.
One of my specialties is being critical, and yet I cannot find a bad thing to say about this book.
Did you know that every time your heart beats, it is forcing blood into a network of arteries, veins, and capillaries that extend for tens of thousands of miles within your body? That's right... TENS of thousands! ...Of miles! Think about it. Did you know that if your folded-up brain were spread out, it would cover two-and-a-half square feet, and within this space are ten billion neurons and sixty trillion synapse connections? (Hey Mr. Gates... Pentium-Shmentium!)
Did you know that the human skin contains 2.5 million sweat glands?
Neither did I. But with this book you learn so much. Like, for instance, a sure-fire way to memorize the ten chemicals that make up the human body.
But "How We Live" is not just some sort of compendium of biological facts, it is an exciting journey through real life situations that we can all relate to or at least sympathize with. Some of the case histories here are just incredible.
Nuland covers everything from theories on the human spirit and the will to live, basic cell division, the reproductive act and system, the nerves and how they work, DNA and genetic structure, the heart, the digestive system, the brain, and how we think.
Did it bug me that Nuland (an agnostic) is not a creationist?
Sort of.
I am so 100% convinced that a real "living" God designed all that Nuland talks about in this book. So it sometimes bothered me to hear him attribute so much wonderful intricacy to the specious powers of evolution/natural selection. But I greatly appreciated his comment in the final chapter, where he said that, in the final analysis, "to espouse atheism is to be unscientific."
Read the book to find out what this veteran medical scientist means by that statement.
Read this book to find out what Ralph Waldo Emerson meant when he said:
"One moment of a man's life is a fact so stupendous as to take the lustre out of all fiction."
Read this book and nod your head in agreement with St. Augustine, who said:
"Men go forth to wonder at the heights of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vast compass of the ocean, the course of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering." (From Confessions, Book X, chapter 8).
Read How We Live, and do some proper wondering.

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding book
Review: Dr. Nuland has written a well constructed book that leads the reader through a bit of anatomy, together with helpful discussions of the Greek and Latin words behind the anatomical names. However, the main focus is on how the body strives to maintain health and how the emergent phenomena of 'Human Spirit' plays into that maintenance. Contrary to the impressions from earlier reviewers, I found this book to be extremely well written, and carefully constructed so that the reader is exposed to the nature of the material in a well ordered way. I loved his writing style, I loved the emotion behind the stories he told, and I appreciate his struggles with how the human spirit could emerge from the chaos of evolution. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Decent fact coverage, but his writing style is very spotty
Review: Dr. Nuland seems to have an amazing command of the form and function of much of the body. Unfortunately, his decriptions are often marred by overly verbose language that detracts from the topic at hand. For example: "As alarming and jarring as the page was, it was at the same time stangely exhilarating. At once supplicating and commanding, part outcry for help and part call to arms, the clamorous message spoke to me like some suddenly recalled ancestral imperitive." The book continues on like this for some time. It takes almost an entire page for Dr. Nuland to get from the front door of the hospital to the emergency room. This might not be so bad if it did not interrupt (read: stop cold) the flow of a quite riveting medical case study. It seems that much of this book has suffered from the overuse of a thesaurus. "Clamorous"?, "ancestral imperitive"?, give me a break.

Unlike another reviewer, I did not at all mind the long descriptions without illustrations of many of the body's vital systems. Since this is not intended to be an anatomy textbook, the fact that you cannot fully understand how these systems work had no bearing upon the point Dr. Nuland is trying to get across.

Overall, an interesting book, but severly hurt by his writing style. Perhaps another edition of this book can be run past a good editor.

Rating:
Summary: Body Mechanics
Review: I bought this book under the title "Wisdom of the Body". Because it was written after "How We Die", which won a National Book Award, it was changed from "Wisdom of the Body" to "How We Live" because so many reviewers nicknamed it that. Dr. Nuland is one of the best writer's I have come across concerning the function of the human body. He writes with such clarity and interweaves his stories with wonderful references to the history of medicine. I think everyone that has the least bit of interest in how their body works should read his books. You don't have to have a medical background to understand his writing, but if you do have a medical background, he helps you see things even more clearly. These books are especially meaningful for anyone who has an aging parent suffering from certain illnesses. It will give you an understanding and a peace that you might not find elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Body Mechanics
Review: I bought this book under the title "Wisdom of the Body". Because it was written after "How We Die", which won a National Book Award, it was changed from "Wisdom of the Body" to "How We Live" because so many reviewers nicknamed it that. Dr. Nuland is one of the best writer's I have come across concerning the function of the human body. He writes with such clarity and interweaves his stories with wonderful references to the history of medicine. I think everyone that has the least bit of interest in how their body works should read his books. You don't have to have a medical background to understand his writing, but if you do have a medical background, he helps you see things even more clearly. These books are especially meaningful for anyone who has an aging parent suffering from certain illnesses. It will give you an understanding and a peace that you might not find elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Agreeing with a previous reviewer
Review: I think Dr. Nuland's book is very good but like a previous reviewer, I don't understand how he comes to the conclusion that random chance mutations produced something as awesome as the human body! I think his bringing macroevolution (an unproven theory that to the honest, open-minded person has no supporting evidence) into the discussion of anatomy is gratuitous.

Rating:
Summary: Uneven and lacking sufficient illustrations
Review: I yield to no one in my admiration for Dr. Nuland's story telling, writing skills, or speaking eloquence. However, THE WISDOM OF THE BODY is not a successfully made book. It mixes together fascinating clinical stories with monotonous, drawn out descriptions of the body's functions. Nuland does not always succeed in conveying the body's anatomy and physiology to the reader, and the result is often a restless boredom. This book has only 8 or 9 illustrations, and should have used ten times that many if readers are to understand the complex concepts Nuland discusses. As a fellow surgeon, I enjoyed reading Nuland's personal case histories, but there are much better books to consult for educating one's self on the wisdom of the body. (A few examples: Tortora and Agnostakos TEXTBOOK OF PHYSIOLOGY, Frank Netter's CIBA illustrations, or Dr. Paul Brand's FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE.)

Rating:
Summary: Not this gifted writer's best book
Review: Last year, I read and greatly enjoyed Sherwin B. Nuland's How We Die. It was therefore with great excitement that I checked out from our library Nuland's recent The Wisdom of The Body (in softcover, the book is titled How We Live).

I was disappointed. Nuland, a surgeon and professor of surgery at Yale, is at his best in describing medical events and systems in the context of case histories. The few times he does this in Wisdom make for both compelling story-telling and instruction. Unfortunately, much of Wisdom reads like an introductory primer in human medical systems. This is a worthy goal for a book, and Nuland does it well, but it was not what I expected. His basic thesis, that the "wisdom" of the body consists of complex, adaptable systems which by their very variability sustain homeostasis, is persuasively argued. However, Nuland showed in his earlier book that a serious medical argument could be (and was) successfully made both through anecdotal case history and exposition of the broader principles involved.

Nuland misplaced the fulcrum in the balance of his most recent book, with unfortunate results. He is, however, such a fine and humane writer that I eagerly await his next work (as I do his new column in The American Scholar).

Rating:
Summary: Like an adventure novel
Review: This was the first of Nuland's books that I have read and it will definitely not be the last. I found it extremely fascinating to read, both from the perspective of the scientific and humanities aspects to medicine. He tells about the body's inner workings through unique case studies over the course of his career. The physiology is very descriptive, but not in a boring text-book type of way. The pages flow from one to the next as he explores the various aspectes that living organisms, especially humans, go through in the process of life. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in medicine or biology. There are better books that focus on only the science or personal aspect of medicine, but this is a rare and fabulously written combination of the two. Nuland's command of the English language is a joy to read and will be extremely informative and entertaining to the novice or expert reader.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Overview
Review: We start with an overview of the body as a working, smoothly functioning system. Dr. Nuland tells us that a stable system is not a static one, but one that is constantly changing and adapting. The paradox is stability means instability. Although his background is medical science, he has the courage to admit that medicine is an art. Going back to his system's paridigm, he says we are greater than the sum of our biological parts. From that statement he makes an inference, saying by our own choices, we can enhance what we've been given physically.

He returns to this healing theme later in the book by noting, "All growth and all healing depend on the ability of cells to divide and thereby reproduce themselves."

While the book presents fascinating insight on the body's physical functions, it totally misses the mark spiritually. When he comments on those matters, rather frequently in the margins my comments are "bogus" and "spiritually blind." He knows the external functions, but he is woefully lacking on the unseen part.