Cutting Remarks: Insights and Recollections of a Surgeon Book

I really, really, really enjoyed this book. It's hilarious, irreverent (sometimes to the point of being offensive), bombastic, and above all tells it like it is. The doctoring books I usually read are introspective and like to examine, in great detail, what the doctor-patient relationship comprises and the ethical resonances surrounding a certain medical decision. I like these kinds of books because they reflect on the humanity of medicine and how we can never be certain of anything. However, when this kind of meditativeness gets too overwrought, it can veer toward the territory of histrionics. "Cutting Remarks" is the opposite of books of the likes of "Final Exam" or "Incidental Findings" (much as I love them dearly). It cares not of the patient and instead focuses on the unique, torturous apprenticeship that comprises a surgical residency. It paints, in broad strokes, the characters you'll find in a surgical ward - whether it's the sweat dripping off an attending physician's forehead straight into the gaping wound of an anesthetized patient on the surgical table or an ambitious 19-year-old wunderkind teaching students many years his elder how to dissect and cut away strings of fascia. Schwab's prose is beautiful and evocative in its own way, but his voice - its slight arrogance, its pride, its humor and honesty - is what really draws me to him. All of these are facets that make him a great surgeon and an even better writer.