The Laws of Medicine - Siddhartha Mukherjee

Siddhartha Mukherjee is very smart, very thoughtful, and a very talented writer, with an ear for the telling anecdote.  (We have previously reviewed his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies).  The Laws of Medicine is a focused reflection on how medicine has changed over the past 80 years, viewed through the lens of Mukherjee's desire to identify "laws", specific to medicine, that govern its practice.

The book is serious and thought-provoking but also rather charming....and it's a fast read.  It's definitely a library book, not a worthwhile purchase - it's almost pocket-sized, it's thin, and it has some lovely textless illustrated pages to add space for personal reflection between one chapter and the next.  Purchasing it ($16.99) would be a good way to support the TED Talks (from which this book was adapted), but I was happier to delight in Mukherjee's reflections, on the library's dime!  To offer a little substance to this review, here's a nice thought, snatched from the book:

Priors. Outliers. Biases.  That all three laws of medicine involve limits and constraints on human knowledge is instructive.

I definitely recommend this highly.