Product Description

"An anatomy of human life, vividly illustrated. . . . Awe-inspiring [and] sublimely uplifting."
--Time

Having won the National Book Award for How We Die, his best-selling inquiry into the causes and modes of death, Sherwin Nuland now turns his attention to the miraculous resiliency of human life.  For this lucid, wonderful, and wonder-filled new book explores the body's mysterious capacity to marshal disparate organs and processes in the interests of survival.

Like its predecessor, How We Live is filled with gripping medical case histories: a woman is pulled back from the brink of death from inexplicable internal bleeding; another patient triumphs over breast cancer; the "routine" removal of a polyp triggers a nearly lethal medical crisis.  For Nuland, each of these cases serves to illustrate the extraordinary responsiveness and adaptability of the human organism.  We learn how the aorta's baroreceptors monitor blood pressure and respond to its minutest fluctuations.  We follow the intricate chain of electrochemical command that makes us leap out of the path of a speeding car. We discover why the stomach--which is capable of breaking down everything from porridge to pizza--refrains from digesting itself.  Informed by sympathy for human suffering and an erudition that includes poetry and the Talmud as well as the medical canon, How We Live is science writing of the rarest kind--lucid, poetic, and genuinely uplifting.

Originally published under the title The Wisdom of the Body

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46781 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-26
• Released on: 1998-05-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From Amazon.com
After he won the National Book Award for How We Die, physician and popular medical writer Sherwin Nuland noticed that book critics kept referring to his next book, The Wisdom of the Body, as How We Live. Rather than fight the tide, he embraced the nickname and reissued the book. How We Live is a fascinating examination of the machinery of life. Dr. Nuland begins his meditation with a hair-raising account of a medical emergency that nearly ends in disaster: a 40-year-old woman almost bleeds to death on the operating table as he and other doctors struggle frantically to find the source of the hemorrhage. Eventually, Dr. Nuland and his team are able to locate the cause--a rare aneurysm of the splenic artery--and repair it. The patient survives. How We Live, Dr. Nuland tells us, grew out of the experiences of that night and his certainty that Marge Hanson lived because of her own will and the surgical team's will not to let her die. That "will to live" is what Dr. Nuland calls the Human Spirit, and spirit is very much a part of the body's wisdom.

Each chapter of How We Live focuses on a different biological function, from the work of the lymph nodes to the process of pregnancy and birth. The heart, the nervous and digestive systems, the sex organs, and the brain are all explored and commented on with clarity and grace. But Dr. Nuland is not content with merely providing an operating manual for the body. He is in a constant state of wonder at what a miraculous and mysterious thing the body is: a dynamic system of parts all working in concert, infused with that fierce, intangible quality--the human spirit.

From Library Journal
In this engrossing book, Nuland, author of the prize-winning How We Die, has turned his medical knowledge to the wonder of life. He offers a lucid anatomical and physiological tour of the human body, from cells and DNA to tissues and organs, reinforcing the sense of wonder with strategic case studies from his medical experience at Yale Medical School. Interspersed throughout is a discussion of the gnawing issue of what constitutes the mystery of life: How do biochemical interactions explain the quintessence of Homo sapiens? Nuland presents a formidable set of scientific facts and gives us much to ponder concerning our spirituality. Highly recommended.
-?James Swanton, Harlem Hosp. Lib., New York
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Having won the National Book Award for How We Die (1995), Nuland, humane physician and practical individual, now writes about life. So doing, he also pursues nothing less than the human spirit, which impels many persons' most admirable activities, although they may have little or nothing to do with survival. Nuland glories in the developments that brought Homo sapiens to the present stage. He considers body systems and human processes, dealing with each historically and scientifically and then bringing it to life in a detailed patient history--and the word patient, not the usual case, is apt here, for Nuland--his own patients are fortunate indeed in having him as their physician--sees living, feeling persons, not diseases, and treats them accordingly (gentleness, he points out, is necessary in dealing not only with the patient but also with himself as physician). The body, Nuland sums up, achieves its stability through being unstable. This book, a prizewinner whether or not it actually wins one, conveys much information, discusses philosophical and social questions open-mindedly, and delights us withal, thanks to Nuland's dry sense of humor. William Beatty

Customer Reviews

Heavy on science, but extremely well-written overall.
This was the first of Nuland's books that I have read and it will definitely not be the last. I found it extremely fascinating to read, both from the perspective of the scientific and humanities aspects to medicine. He tells about the body's inner workings through unique case studies over the course of his career. The physiology is very descriptive, but not in a boring text-book type of way. The pages flow from one to the next as he explores the various aspectes that living organisms, especially humans, go through in the process of life. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in medicine or biology. There are better books that focus on only the science or personal aspect of medicine, but this is a rare and fabulously written combination of the two. Nuland's command of the English language is a joy to read and will be extremely informative and entertaining to the novice or expert reader.

Not this gifted writer's best book
Last year, I read and greatly enjoyed Sherwin B. Nuland's How We Die. It was therefore with great excitement that I checked out from our library Nuland's recent The Wisdom of The Body (in softcover, the book is titled How We Live).

I was disappointed. Nuland, a surgeon and professor of surgery at Yale, is at his best in describing medical events and systems in the context of case histories. The few times he does this in Wisdom make for both compelling story-telling and instruction. Unfortunately, much of Wisdom reads like an introductory primer in human medical systems. This is a worthy goal for a book, and Nuland does it well, but it was not what I expected. His basic thesis, that the "wisdom" of the body consists of complex, adaptable systems which by their very variability sustain homeostasis, is persuasively argued. However, Nuland showed in his earlier book that a serious medical argument could be (and was) successfully made both through anecdotal case history and exposition of the broader principles involved.

Nuland misplaced the fulcrum in the balance of his most recent book, with unfortunate results. He is, however, such a fine and humane writer that I eagerly await his next work (as I do his new column in The American Scholar).

Body Mechanics
I bought this book under the title "Wisdom of the Body". Because it was written after "How We Die", which won a National Book Award, it was changed from "Wisdom of the Body" to "How We Live" because so many reviewers nicknamed it that. Dr. Nuland is one of the best writer's I have come across concerning the function of the human body. He writes with such clarity and interweaves his stories with wonderful references to the history of medicine. I think everyone that has the least bit of interest in how their body works should read his books. You don't have to have a medical background to understand his writing, but if you do have a medical background, he helps you see things even more clearly. These books are especially meaningful for anyone who has an aging parent suffering from certain illnesses. It will give you an understanding and a peace that you might not find elsewhere.