Learning How the Heart Beats: The Making of a Pediatrician

In language as direct and unadorned as medical progress notes, Dr. Claire McCarthy's collection of autobiographical sketches, Learning How the Heart Beats: The Making of a Pediatrician, leads you vividly through a doctor's training. From her first laboratory cadaver (and McCarthy's awed astonishment when she first cuts into its hands), through a series of unforgettable challenges (successful and failed) in treating her first patients, to her ultimate recognition that the ethical and emotional components of medicine are not as simple as they seem, McCarthy learns that those who sustain life are constantly amazed by how little they really know and how much they'll never control. McCarthy's anecdotes are not for the squeamish or easily depressed: You'll wonder how doctors survive, and you'll wince, cry, and come to an unwelcome but strangely comforting perspective on your own fragile mortality. A