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First Cut

A Season in the Human Anatomy Lab

Albert Howard Carter III

Picador

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ISBN10: 031219546X
ISBN13: 9780312195465

Trade Paperback

320 Pages

$24.00

CA$26.99

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With humor, compassion, and wisdom, Howard Carter recounts the semester he spent watching first-year medical students in a human anatomy lab. From the tentative early incisions of the back, the symbolic weight of extracting the heart, and by the end, the curious mappings of the brain, we embark on a path that is at once frightening, awesome, and finally redemptive.

Reviews

Praise for First Cut

"It's a beauty of a book, and its anatomy is unique and lovely."—John Stone, Associate Dean of Admissions at Emory University School of Medicine, and author of In the Country of Hearts and In All This Rain

"Carter, a superb writer, paints us a marvelous picture of the human anatomy lab."The New England Journal of Medicine

"An intimately woven and candid exposition of life, death, and learning . . . First Cut is pleasurable to read, both entertaining and thought provoking."The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)

"[An] excellent book . . . His reflections on the intricacies of our construction are calm, restrained, and intelligent."The Washington Post

"An incisive and finely wrought rendition of what takes place in the anatomy laboratory, that crucible where every doctor is born."Richard Selzer, author of Mortal Lessons, The Exact Location of the Soul, and Letters to a Young Doctor

"A warmly engaging, cheerful, and utterly winning book . . . As engrossing as any novel, as thoughtful as the most searching memoir, as suggestive as any contemporary scientific essay."—Fred Chappell, The Raleigh News & Observer

"Carter provides insight into a critical aspect of medical training, and an unusually intimate, even arresting, view of the bodies we have and the bodies we will become."—Publishers Weekly

"[A] compelling book . . . The author treats all parties, living and dead, with honesty, respect, and kindness throughout."—The Bloomsbury Review

Reviews from Goodreads