Articles

Gawande’s sparkling anecdotal prose is skilfully employed in making complex medical dilemmas engaging and lucid to the lay reader. Over the course of eleven essays Gawande looks at issues such as hand washing in hospitals, polio outbreaks in India, why we should be troubled by the rise in caesarean births and the ethical implications for doctors becoming involved in capital punishment. A wise, humane and riveting read underscored by one simple question: what does it take to be good at something when failure is so easy? Wonderful.