https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9174-5360
As I prepared to write this review, I looked back on 16 books assessed in Anesthesiology in 2022 and was struck by the diversity of material: textbooks, “current issues” books, history books, and three memoirs: two written by surgeons and one by a cystic fibrosis patient. It is rare for an anesthesiologist to tell the story of our daily lives, so it is delightful to find that one of the latest books to land in the review pile is Saving Grace: What Patients Teach Their Doctors about Life, Death, and the Balance in Between, a memoir by David D. Alfery, M.D.
Memoirs are tricky things: if too celebratory, they read like a narcissist’s diary, if too introspective, like dark confessions from an analyst’s couch. Dr. Alfery, however, presents us with an anthology of a different sort; a collection of stories from his career that contribute in one way or...
