Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum, by Gavin Francis
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Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum, by Gavin Francis
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We assume we know our bodies intimately, but for many of us they remain uncharted territory, an enigma of bone and muscle, neurons and synapses. How many of us understand the way seizures affect the brain, how the heart is connected to well-being, or the why the foot holds the key to our humanity? In Adventures in Human Being, award-winning author Gavin Francis leads readers on a journey into the hidden pathways of the human body, offering a guide to its inner workings and a celebration of its marvels.Drawing on his experiences as a surgeon, ER specialist, and family physician, Francis blends stories from the clinic with episodes from medical history, philosophy, and literature to describe the body in sickness and in health, in life and in death. When assessing a young woman with paralysis of the face, Francis reflects on the age-old difficulty artists have had in capturing human expression. A veteran of the war in Iraq suffers a shoulder injury that Homer first described three millennia ago in the Iliad. And when a gardener pricks her finger on a dirty rose thorn, her case of bacterial blood poisoning brings to mind the comatose sleeping beauties in the fairy tales we learn as children.At its heart, Adventures in Human Being is a meditation on what it means to be human. Poetic, eloquent, and profoundly perceptive, this book will transform the way you view your body.
Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum, by Gavin Francis- Amazon Sales Rank: #67525 in Books
- Brand: Basic Books
- Published on: 2015-10-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.20" h x 1.20" w x 5.70" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 272 pages
Review PRAISE FOR ADVENTURES IN HUMAN BEING:2015 Saltire Literary Award – Non-Fiction Book of the YearThe Economist – Books of the Year 2015The Independent (UK) – Best Summer ReadsThe Guardian (UK) – Best Science Books of 2015“Gavin Francis’s engaging and edifying book Adventures in Human Being breathes life into the study of anatomy by situating it in the larger landscape of human experience, connecting the body to art, literature, music, astronomy, and history.”—New York Review of Books“This sort of book has been done before but not nearly so well as Dr. Francis does it. He brings certain necessary equipment to this task. These include a keen sense of the marvelous, a prose style as elegant and cutting as a scalpel, and a breadth of clinical experience that is unusual in an age of specialization… Adventures in Human Being, with its deft mix of the clinical and the lyrical, is a triumph of the eloquent brain and the compassionate heart.”—Wall Street Journal“Delightful... The joy of Mr Francis’s work lies in the fact that although he delights in the body’s physical reality, he takes care not to reduce human experience to that alone.”—The Economist“It is grand, eloquent stuff, occasionally humorous, frequently moving, and invariably informative. In other hands, Adventures in Human Being might well have become cluttered with cliche, detail or sentimentality but Francis has a lightness of touch that helps him avoid these pitfalls. His use of quotes is sparing but erudite and his lack of self-importance – often a failing in his profession – is welcome. The end result is a thoroughly entertaining, provocative work.”—The Guardian“That Adventures in Human Being is an astonishing, moving and enchanting book can be explained in part by Francis’s unique range of experience, his erudition and his enthusiasm.”—New Statesman“[Francis] offers an unusually upbeat medical perspective…His essays form a kind of anatomical atlas in which Francis proceeds from head to toe, stopping along the way to explore the lungs, genitalia, liver, and other organs.”—Boston Globe“[Francis] gracefully integrates elements of philosophy, medical history and literature to add a contemplative element to what is an already mesmerizing book. He writes from a medical perspective without being pretentious, and his simple yet highly descriptive prose beautifully communicates the science and drama bound up in the human form.”—BookTrib“In Francis's beautifully written, exquisitely thoughtful, and completely captivating cartography, the body is a superbly-lit museum filled with treasures, and Dr. Francis the perfect guide who deftly weaves together science and story to reveal the wondrous flesh-and-blood underpinnings of our daily lives. It's a spellbinding view.”—Diane Ackerman, author of The Zookeeper’s Wife and The Human Age“A sober and beautiful book about the landscape of the human body: thought-provoking and eloquent.”—Hilary Mantel“Wonderful, subtle, unpretentious.... I have never read a book like this one and I recommend it wholeheartedly. Reading it, you feel better.”—John Berger, author of Ways of Seeing“[A] brilliantly original and highly engaging book that takes you on a journey that is both familiar and unfamiliar, a book that marries both the physical and metaphysical with such imaginative wit and eloquence.” —The Independent (UK)"… It promises an intriguing voyage and delivers it in great style. Thoroughly recommended.”“So enthralling and so well written that it should win [a] clutch of prizes… immensely engaging and often unexpected… Some of the chapters are small masterpieces of insight and information.”—Sunday Times (UK)“In a series of deft essays on anatomy, starting with the head and working down to the feet, Francis moves skillfully between the scientific and the aesthetic, anatomical fact and emotional consequence, to craft a profound yet highly readable account of the intimate, inextricable relationship between the physical body and what some still call the soul.”—Irish Times“Clever, strangely beautiful… The style is crisp and fast and the human tales irresistible.”—The Times (London)“[Francis] is a fine, subtle and observant writer… this is an illuminating and arresting book.”—Herald Scotland“A quietly radical, three-dimensional view of issues such as reproduction, birth, death and disability that has the power, at times, to make you stop mid-sentence and carefully reassess some of your most basic assumptions.”—Scotsman“Since he is both a GP and a travel writer, a better-suited guide than Francis to this bag of flesh, fluids and bones would be hard to find. There is much to astonish in [his] travel through the ‘most intimate landscape of all.’”—Sunday Express (UK)“Francis jumps nimbly between anatomy, history, and personal experience in a way that makes the book both highly informative and compulsively readable. You have only to glance at the index to see the range of this remarkable book… It promises an intriguing voyage and delivers it in great style. Thoroughly recommended.”—Daily Express (UK)
About the Author Gavin Francis is a physician and the author of two books, including Empire Antarctica, which won the Scottish Book of the Year Award, was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and the Costa Prize, and was named a best book of the year by The Economist and the Financial Times. A regular contributor to the Guardian and the New York Review of Books, Francis lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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46 of 50 people found the following review helpful. The Good Doctor By Joe Mcnally I reviewed this book on Amazon's UK site. It's worth noting that the book, and my review, refer to the UK's National Health Service (the NHS), which makes many mistakes, but without it millions of lives in Britain would be seriously affected. For all its UK 'bias' (Dr, Francis lives and practices in Scotland, it is a book that will cross all boundaries and cultures, and I urge you to read it.Medicine men...I never quite know what to make of those I meet. Last year, in the early hours of an April morning, I sat alone against the rear wall and watched a young doctor sympathetically settle my wife into a bed in the intensive care unit. The ward was quiet. Away to my left was a small peacock of a man in glittering waistcoat that looked cut from a priest's vestments. I thought he was wearing spats, but as he approached, head up, better to see down his nose, I saw they were two tone, like golf shoes.The young doctor was telling the nurse what medication my wife needed when the peacock, still ten strides away, called out 'No!' And he took over, without even acknowledging his young colleague. I later discovered that this peacock of a surgeon had told my sister to 'get yourself home and empty your bowels', when she presented with severe abdominal pain. Three days later he was cutting cancer from her bowel.Then, as my wife's condition deteriorated, I was introduced to another surgeon, a man of humility and humanity, a man who did not patronise as he answered me straight:'What's the prognosis for my wife, please?''The next 24 hours will be crucial'''Worst case scenario?''We have had informal discussions of putting your wife on a ventilator.''What happens then?''...it is very difficult to come back from'Since then, I've taken a much greater interest in the way the body works and the way the minds of those who choose medicine as a profession work. Gavin Francis's book not only taught me about the body, but it gave me back some sanity and balance in the judgement of others. The drama of saving lives, of making decisions, of being 'somebody', attracts the peacocks, but what a salve it is to find that it has an irresistible pull too for people like Gavin Francis. You will be in turns transfixed and enchanted by Dr Francis's gradual uncloaking of the human body, not least by his skill in portraying without 'big words'.You'll learn not only about the bone and blood and meat of which we're made, but of how others, long dead, saw it - the Greeks, the Romans, the philosophers, and the great writers. And all of it as seamless as the body itself. You are not jerked from place to place, but led smoothly along with the expertise of a born writer as well as a great doctor. You will watch with enchanted horror the rapid deterioration of a dark-haired young woman whose brush with a rose thorn brought her long lost mother to her intensive care bedside. And while the mother waits with her taped-eyed, tubed and wired unconscious child, Gavin Francis links her story beautifully with that of Snow White and the beliefs of older days.John McEnroe's wife, the rock star, Patti Smith, finally discouraged him from trying to be a top guitarist by asking him, 'What are the chances of god giving you the talent to be the greatest tennis player in the world, and then adding some more to make you the greatest rock guitarist?'Nobody could ask such a question of Dr Francis, a man blessed with the ability to be the finest of medicine men, alongside a sublime gift as a writer and a toucher of the human heart, in a manner way beyond the physical. I suspect the main wish of anyone finishing this book will be that Dr Francis would add them to his list patients.I am off now to buy the other books of Gavin Francis. Happily, my wife will be able to read them too. After three weeks of lying with nine tubes sewn into her neck feeding her all the nutrients her body needed, her pancreas survived (well, all but the tail). That tail died. I suspect this tale, so wonderfully told by Gavin Francis, will outlive many of us.
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful. Deeply human and wildly adventurous. Not to be missed. By Aaron C. Brown This is a wonderful series of anecdotes interspersed with some basic medical information--spiced with a bit of history and doctor's meditation--that adds up to considerably more than the sum of its parts. Rather than "Adventures in Being Human," I would call this book, "Adventures in Occupying a Human Body." The author skillfully describes the physiology, anatomy, biochemistry and neurology of the physical machine that is the body, but never loses sight of the person who occupies the same space. Starting from the top (the brain) and working down, organs and systems are described along with some of the reasons they can send you to the emergency room.In the chapter "Wrist and Hand," we meet two people with "boxer's fracture," neither one admitting to throwing a punch. First is a pickpocket who claims he fell through a window, but in fact punched through a glass door attempting to control his rage and avoid hitting a woman. Second is a prison warder, whose story of a flying desk is belied by his prisoner in the next cubicle with a broken jaw. As the author gives a dispassionate clinical description of how the damage is repaired, he muses about the elegance and beauty of the tendons, muscles and bones that can drive a fist in horrific violence. There are no morals or silly romanticism, just medical expertise and informed appreciation.One of the most moving stories is about Bill, a sensitive human dying of inoperable lung cancer. The airy beauty of the lungs, a thousand square feet of the most delicate imaginable fabric, contrasts with the "tumor burden" that creates heaviness and drags the human to the grave. Yet this story is never maudlin, the author is a sad realist, doing his best to give comfort, without "rage against the dying of the light." And through it all, his appreciation for the wonder of healthy lungs puts him in mind of wind, and leaves on trees; but also the ashes of cremated humans.The book is fairly graphic in its descriptions of pain and suffering. The author never dwells on the subjects, but he does not use euphemisms or avoid mentioning the gore. Many cases involve seriously injured patients, or worse. I don't think this will bother most adult readers, but sensitive souls should be warned.You can regard this as an entertaining way to learn about anatomy and medicine, or as a series of humorous and thoughtful essays about people. Either way, I recommend this book.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful. Better than Expected! By Michele Vieux This book is WAY different than I expected - it's NOT boring but I learned a ton! I like the approach to how it was written and the stories are great.
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