"Several of these pieces have appeared, in slightly different form, in the New Yorker and Slate"--T.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-264) and index.

pt. 1. Fallibility: Education of a knife -- The computer and the hernia factory -- When doctors make mistakes -- Nine thousand surgeons -- When good doctors go bad -- pt. 2. Mystery: Full moon Friday the thirteenth -- The pain perplex -- A queasy feeling -- Crimson tide -- The man who couldn't stop eating -- pt. 3. Uncertainty: Final cut -- The dead baby mystery -- Whose body is it anyway? -- The case of the red leg.

"In gripping accounts of true cases, surgeon Atul Gawande explores the power and the limits of medicine, offering an unflinching view from the scalpel's edge. Lays bare a science not in its idealized form but as it actually is - uncertain, perplexing, and profoundly human"