When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery

Vertosick trained as a neurosurgeon in the era before imaging made the brain visible and writes with the earned frankness of someone who has watched young residents kill patients learning to do necessary things. The chapter on his first solo craniotomy is among the most honest writing about medical training in the literature. He is not confessing failure. He is documenting a system that uses patients as curriculum.