In Blood and Guts, veteran science writer Richard Hollingham weaves a compelling narrative from the key moments in surgical history. We have a ringside seat in the operating theater of University College Hospital in London as world-renowned Victorian surgeon Robert Liston performs a remarkable amputation in thirty seconds–from first cut to final stitch. Innovations such as Joseph Lister’s antiseptic technique, the first open-heart surgery, and Walter Freeman’s lobotomy operations, among other breakthroughs, are brought to life in these pages in vivid detail.

Today, astonishing surgical breakthroughs are making limb transplants, face transplants, and a host of other previously un dreamed of operations possible. But getting here has not been a simple story of medical progress. This is popular science writing at it’s best.

…a quick, entertaining read filled with operating-room dramas that end in disaster or triumph and a wide variety of heroes and villains. -Kirkus Reviews