| View Larger Image | The Puzzle People: Memoirs Of A Transplant Surgeon | Paperbackby Thomas Starzl (Author)
| List Price: | $18.00 | | Price: | $12.24 | | You Save: | $5.76 (32%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | University of Pittsburgh Press | | Edition: | Revisedth Edition | | Page Count: | 400 Pages | | Publication Date: | November 30, 2003 | | Sales Rank: | 550,602th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Given the tensions and demands of medicine, highly successful physicians and surgeons rarely achieve equal success as prose writers. It is truly extraordinary that a major, international pioneer in the controversial field of transplant surgery should have written a spellbinding, and heart-wrenching, autobiography. Thomas Starzl grew up in LeMars, Iowa, the son of a newspaper publisher and a nurse. His father also wrote science fiction and was acquainted with the writer Ray Bradbury. Starzl left the family business to enter Northwestern University Medical School where he earned both and M.D. and a PhD. While he was a student, and later during his surgical internship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, he began the series of animal experiments that led eventually to the world’s first transplantation of the human liver in 1963. Throughout his career, first at the University of Colorado and then at the University of Pittsburgh, he has aroused both worldwide admiration and controversy. His technical innovations and medical genius have revolutionized the field, but Starzl has not hesitated to address the moral and ethical issues raised by transplantation. In this book he clearly states his position on many hotly debated issues including brain death, randomized trials for experimental drugs, the costs of transplant operations, and the system for selecting organ recipients from among scores of desperately ill patients. There are many heroes in the story of transplantation, and many “puzzle people,” the patients who, as one journalist suggested, might one day be made entirely of various transplanted parts. They are old and young, obscure and world famous. Some have been taken into the hearts of America, like Stormie Jones, the brave and beautiful child from Texas. Every patient who receives someone else’s organ - and Starzl remembers each one - is a puzzle. “It was not just the acquisition of a new part,” he writes. “The rest of the body had to change in many ways before the gift could be accepted. It was necessary for the mind to see the world in a different way.” The surgeons and physicians who pioneered transplantation were also changed: they too became puzzle people. “Some were corroded or destroyed by the experience, some were sublimated, and none remained the same.” |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 7 reviews)
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Interesting personal account of recent surgical history by Alon Kahana (Chicago, IL)  5 Stars
March 11, 2001
This book, by transplantation pioneer Dr. Thomas Starzl, is an easy read, a wonderfully inspiring story, and an interesting history of modern surgical medicine. I was compelled to write the review because of several reviews that disparage Dr. Starzl and this book.The book is an inspirational story of a young mid-westerner, with no connections or wealth to help him in his journey, who innovated, struggled, competed, succeeded, and eventually became THE transplant surgeon in the world. The reason Pittsburgh is a transplant mecca is that Dr. Starzl is there.Now, certainly Dr. Starzl's personality has a reputation that casts him in a negative light - I don't know the man, but I suspect that great succeess also breeds great resentments. Whatever his failings are, his contributions are beyond dispute.Dr. Starzl's ability as a surgeon has also been questioned. Again, I have never operated with him, but the success of his transplant program speaks for itself. Also, if his only contribution was to innovate and educate a generation of transplant surgeons, then that by itself would be a fine legacy.Finally, some reviews bash the book, so here goes my actual book review:The book is an extremely personal account, with all the beauty and failings that are an inherent part of such a personal endeavor. Yes, he settles old scores. Yes, he portrays himself as the greatest man on earth. Yes he does not dwell on important social and ethical issues that confront modern surgery. However, these "problems" with the book are also what makes this book such a wonderful read - it is really like a conversation with a great man. He lets you in on his most secret fears (he hates operating), his most painful memories (his father's health and death, his failed family life, his second wife's history of physical abuse), his greatest triumphs (successful liver transplantations), his greatest failures (failed surgeries, inability to get along with colleagues and superiors in academia, his family/children). This is such a personal account that any other perspective on it completely misses the point. Dr. Starzl pours his heart out, which is what makes this book so interesting.I've recently read the autobiography of Francis Moore, the great chair of Surgery at Harvard. It is such a boring book ! It offers nothing personal, nothing intimate, just a dry listing of accomplishments and people who were involved in them. One learns more about Dr. Moore from Dr. Starzl's book than from his own autobiography.In conclusion, this is a very captivating account of a personal journey. For all his failings, Dr. Starzl is not afraid to reveal himself, and the result is a compelling and inspirational book that most readers will thoroughly enjoy.
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Man with a heart, a real heart. by Grace Lee (Hong Kong SAR PRC) 5 Stars
December 28, 2000
Dr. Starzl saves lifes not only with his skills, but with a real heart. A genuine human being.
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Compelling at times  4 Stars
March 31, 1999
The author disparages several people in this book, including those who are not alive to defend themselves. This reflects more negatively on the author than on the persons he criticizes. Nonetheless, the book is compelling at times, particularly where the author talks about the patients he has helped, or those he has tried to help but who did not survive. The author was and is clearly a major figure in a field which has done much to prolong and improve the lives of many people. If the book accomplishes nothing else, hopefully it will encourage its readers to provide for the donation of their organs after death, or those of their loved ones.
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I am a transplant recipient and need this book 5 Stars
May 30, 1998
Dr Starzl wrote an excellent book of the history of organ transplantation. Without his work in the late 50's many more people would have died. To me he is the real hero. Anyone who can give it a bad review does not live it everyday like my wife and I do. I wish I found it sooner. many thanks Dr. Starzl
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An Egomaniac's Puff Piece  1 Stars
March 17, 1998
This has to be one of the most poorly written books I've ever read. There were frequent references to trivial incidents in the author's life (e.g. a surprise 50th birthday party), but there was no overarching sense of the major accomplishments and setbacks in transplant science during the author's illustrious career. By the end of the book, I was left with no sense of the next medical frontiers in transplantation, or the ethical dilemmas they would engender. Starzl would have done far better to coauthor with a journalist, the better to highlight crucial issues and establish context. Attacks on old professional enemies and odd turns of phrase about people's ethnic backgrounds were also off-putting. Knowing that Starzl can hold a grudge for decades made me take his chracterizations of even his friends with a few kilograms of salt. Starzl may have been a brilliant surgeon, but this book reads more like a personal indulgence meant for a vanity press. A pity that this book isn't the gripping behind-the-scenes tour of the politics and techniques of transplant it was meant to be.
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