thuglibrarian's review against another edition
4.0
Reading this book was like reading about cowboys in the wild west. Anything goes. Author Mimi Swartz takes readers on the journey with pioneering heart surgeon O. H. “Bud” Frazier and his partner, Dr. Billy Cohn as they spent their careers and lives in an effort to come up with a way to keep patients alive as their own hearts are failing. These men were brilliant men, but who could at times be cut-throat in the drive for inventing an artificial heart.
I read an advance copy and was not compensated.
I read an advance copy and was not compensated.
mdrfromga's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting read about the competitive pursuit of the artificial heart. What was particularly noteworthy was that the early days of artificial hearts was the wild west. Doctors made their own decisions, often with patients and their families who were willing to go for broke. Nothing stood in their way. But along with the developments in the artificial heart came increased regulation, slowing down progress.
mcgaritydotme's review against another edition
3.0
An interesting subject without a great amount of depth or anchoring in history. I love Mimi’s magazine work, but the tale she attempts to tell never rises to the worthiness of being a book.
jlmichesen's review against another edition
4.0
Very interesting history of heart surgery and devices
jmichesen's review against another edition
4.0
Very interesting history of heart surgery and devices
panireads's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
kstates's review against another edition
3.0
More like 2.5 Interesting,but not the captivating read the author seemed to think it was. Also, I found some parts weirdly misogynistic.
nonprofitkate's review against another edition
4.0
"The person who comes up with a way to replace a failing heart with an artificial one, then, will save countless lives and change the future of humankind, much as Louis Pasteur or Sigmund Freud did, or Jonas Salk or Marie Curie. And, of course, the doctor or engineer (or, more likely, the team) who figures out how to make one will likely become very, very rich."
This is what we are presented with in Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart by Mimi Swartz. The book tells the sordid history of a group of surgeons all vying to become the god-like creator of the first artificial heart. Swartz is a stunning and detailed researcher and the book flows well throughout the decades. She starts with the birth of Michael Debakey and Denton Cooley as the "bad boys: of cardiac surgery in Houston. From there, Swartz takes the reader on the stunning and sometimes vaguely unethical battle to be the best, to beat the competition, and to cash in for as much money as humanly possible. My only disappointment is that the book just seemed to end with no conclusion. That could be due to the unfinished tale of the artificial heart but it still could have wrapped up a bit better in my opinion.
I had some knowledge going into the book as my husband's uncle was on the ground floor of Baylor's race to be the best in cardiac care but much of the information was new to me. Readers who have grown up in Houston will know the cast of characters and possibly even the history of the cardiac teams that come into play. This book is not for the faint of heart, however. These are real people that have been used as guinea pigs and sometimes, that's disheartening and upsetting. Know going into it that the early days of heart surgery were akin to the Wild West and not everyone was on the up-and-up.
This is what we are presented with in Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart by Mimi Swartz. The book tells the sordid history of a group of surgeons all vying to become the god-like creator of the first artificial heart. Swartz is a stunning and detailed researcher and the book flows well throughout the decades. She starts with the birth of Michael Debakey and Denton Cooley as the "bad boys: of cardiac surgery in Houston. From there, Swartz takes the reader on the stunning and sometimes vaguely unethical battle to be the best, to beat the competition, and to cash in for as much money as humanly possible. My only disappointment is that the book just seemed to end with no conclusion. That could be due to the unfinished tale of the artificial heart but it still could have wrapped up a bit better in my opinion.
I had some knowledge going into the book as my husband's uncle was on the ground floor of Baylor's race to be the best in cardiac care but much of the information was new to me. Readers who have grown up in Houston will know the cast of characters and possibly even the history of the cardiac teams that come into play. This book is not for the faint of heart, however. These are real people that have been used as guinea pigs and sometimes, that's disheartening and upsetting. Know going into it that the early days of heart surgery were akin to the Wild West and not everyone was on the up-and-up.
left_coast_justin's review against another edition
4.0
Until reading this book, I'd never heard of Mimi Swartz, but she's a really good researcher and writer and I look forward to finding more of her work.
I began reading this book and a second book called "Waterfront: A Walk Aroung Manhattan" on the same day. Both were written by highly-acclaimed writers who have been published in The New Yorker (as solid an imprimatur as we're likely to find.) And yet Swartz has written a great book, and Lopate did not. So let's see if I can figure out what made this book so much fun:
-People who do interesting work are fun to learn about. She focused the book primarily on the stories of three people who really broke down barriers in assisting really sick heart patients
-The story had an arc, from the very earliest days of heart surgery to the present, where thousands of LAVD devices are implanted every year and it's become almost routine. The arc also contained the entire professional lifespans of two of the protagonists
-The usual elements of drama were abundant: Ambition, defeat, the enemy (a faceless bureaucracy), the old guard and the young mavericks, etc etc etc.
The nice thing about this approach is that it took several decades to unfold, and Swartz is smart enough to trickle in a small amount of technical detail throughout the book. I could complain that, by the end of the book, I still didn't have a really clear idea of the current state of artificial hearts or heart assist devices, or their success inside patients; but she wasn't writing a textbook, but rather a tale of struggle and triumph. By end end, the accumulation of trickled-in information gives the reader a reasonable grounding in the subject without ever getting bogged down in eye-glazing detail.
This is a great example of literary nonfiction.
I began reading this book and a second book called "Waterfront: A Walk Aroung Manhattan" on the same day. Both were written by highly-acclaimed writers who have been published in The New Yorker (as solid an imprimatur as we're likely to find.) And yet Swartz has written a great book, and Lopate did not. So let's see if I can figure out what made this book so much fun:
-People who do interesting work are fun to learn about. She focused the book primarily on the stories of three people who really broke down barriers in assisting really sick heart patients
-The story had an arc, from the very earliest days of heart surgery to the present, where thousands of LAVD devices are implanted every year and it's become almost routine. The arc also contained the entire professional lifespans of two of the protagonists
-The usual elements of drama were abundant: Ambition, defeat, the enemy (a faceless bureaucracy), the old guard and the young mavericks, etc etc etc.
The nice thing about this approach is that it took several decades to unfold, and Swartz is smart enough to trickle in a small amount of technical detail throughout the book. I could complain that, by the end of the book, I still didn't have a really clear idea of the current state of artificial hearts or heart assist devices, or their success inside patients; but she wasn't writing a textbook, but rather a tale of struggle and triumph. By end end, the accumulation of trickled-in information gives the reader a reasonable grounding in the subject without ever getting bogged down in eye-glazing detail.
This is a great example of literary nonfiction.