I came to this book with high hopes and a desire to reflect on the lived experience of the COVID-19 pandemic through the eyes of a fellow healthcare provider, Dr. Craig Smith, the Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. However, this book felt disjointed with bouncing timelines and self-important stories that did not resonate. The medical memoir spaces has so many heartfelt, emotionally intelligent books and this is not one of them.

Sincere thanks to St. Martins Press for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I embarked on this literary adventure with high hopes, as the book's initial chapters promised a captivating start. However, my enthusiasm dwindled as the narrative unfolded into a perplexing labyrinth. Despite my appreciation for medical memoirs, this particular journey fell short for me.

While the author showcased moments of commendable writing, the overall experience felt disjointed & would have greatly benefited from extensive editing. The potential of the narrative was overshadowed by its confusing evolution.

I extend my thanks to #NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me this ARC. My review is an honest & voluntary reflection of the book.

2.5/5 stars

This was a tough read - Seeing COVID through the eyes of a surgeon and how he persevered and helped his patients and colleagues through it all .

This book is a heartbreaking look at the first person experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. And not just any person, but a doctor who was on the front lines for months and saw the things that we could only imagine from the outside. And even though the circumstances are sad, Dr. Smith keeps the tone from getting too heavy, as if he knows that we don't need to relive one of the most traumatic times in our lives, but rather he just wants to share his story with us. Incredibly compelling and ultimately inspirational, I thought this was stellar.

See COVID through the eyes of a surgeon -- but also through the eyes of a physician who weaves in details from his life during the shutdown. Details of how he overcame struggles with social anxiety. championed his fellow physicians during the shutdown, all the while presenting his life lessons in a way that makes us believe in our fellow human beings.

I enjoyed the 1st 75% of the book.....it was easy & interesting to read, & told of his unique(?) path to becoming a surgeon. He told of a bit of a daredevil childhood, then worked in a steel mill, & then as an electrical lineman before going to medical school......I really enjoyed that part of the book! He's had quite a career! The last 25% got a little concentrated/tedious/clinical/thick with talk of hospital politics/mergers & acquisitions/revenues/business takeovers & relationships....whew, some of that was 'challenging' to read! Overall, I'd probably recommend this to someone who has some interest in medicine, or that sort of path?
I received an e-ARC of the book from publisher St. Martin's Press via NetGalley for review purposes. These are all my own fair & honest opinions.

Medical nonfiction is one of my favorite subgenres to read about. I have so many recommendations that I will do a separate post, but for now here is a little bit about Nobility in Small Things.
This memoir won’t make my favorites list, but it was still a worthwhile read. I enjoyed reading about Smith’s experience treating Clinton and navigating the treatment of such a high profile patient. His reflections on covid were particularly though provoking. The book would have benefited from more editing to make it a bit more coherent and effective. If you enjoy memoirs and medicine, give this a try!

Nobility in Small Things is a non-fiction book by Craig R. Smith and while it wasn't exactly what I expected there were parts of it that I really enjoyed. I feel like some additional editing would have helped tighten up the story and the focus of the book.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Nobility in Small Things is available now.

I was very excited to read this book. It began interesting enough, but fell short. I felt the book had great potential, but just does not hold on to it. Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book. Receiving the book in this manner had no bearing on my review.

A Surgeon’s Thoughts During the Covid Epidemic

Doctor Smith, Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, had a busy life leaving early every morning to go to the hospital where he performed heart surgery. His life seemed much the same. Then came the Covid epidemic and surgery was stopped cold. He was relegated to his office. This is when he started to write.

The book discusses the early life experiences that pushed him in the direction of medicine, and gives a glimpse of some exciting surgeries like the quadruple bypass performed on Ex President Bill Clinton. I found both of these threads interesting, but perhaps his most intense thoughts came when he talked about how the pandemic affected the hospital and it’s employees. Some of it was very difficult such as the suicides of two doctors at the hospital.

I found the book interesting. It’s not a cohesive account of the life of a busy surgeon. It wanders a bit and contains philosophical musings that are more or less interesting depending on your perspective. If you enjoy learning more about how a surgeon approaches his experience, this book may be perfect for you. However, it is a bit fragmented covering diverse topics.

Thanks to the publisher and Net Galley for this review copy.

When I was asked to read this by the publisher, after reading the blurb, I was pretty excited. Unfortunately, this excitement dwindled away as I read the book.

This book should have been awesome, and to be fair, there were moments that were really enjoyable [The Clinton triple bypass, some of the Covid parts, the part about being a lineman for AT&T <--my Dad was a "phone guy" who did it all and I totally got these parts, though I can see how it would be so deadly dull to people who have no frame of reference LOL], but it was mostly just a dull and tedious read and left me wishing I could have been reading something else. I am truly disappointed over this as I was expecting so much more.

I was able to also receive an audiobook ARC [I need to note here that all of chapter 5 was missing from my audiobook ARC] and I will admit now, it will be tough to review it. I liked the narrator well enough, but with the job he had before him in narrating this snooze-fest of a book, it is difficult to tell if I would like him in other books, but I do believe I would listen to him again as he did the best job he could with the material he was given.

I was asked to read/review this book by St. Marten Press and I thank them, Dr. Craig R. Smith, Braden Wright - Narrator and Macmillan Audio for providing the book ARC and the audiobook ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Know that this memoir is as focused on Smith's path to becoming a physician as it is on his life after he took that step. He details, perhaps more than you would expect, his early jobs and life - so much so that you might fund yourself flipping ahead to get to the medicine, To do so, though, is to miss what he thinks shaped him, The anecdotes about his medical career are insightful and enlightening, Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good read.

Dr. Craig R. Smith may not be a household name, but among the American medical community, he’s quite famous. In 2004, he performed successful quadruple bypass heart surgery on former U.S. President Bill Clinton and attended to complications from that surgery the following year. This book goes into some detail about that operation, eschewing doctor-patient privilege. However, this book was not quite the book I was expecting. I was expecting a book about the 50-odd updates that the doctor provided his staff at a New York City hospital during the COVID-19 outbreak that were motivational and powerful. While that’s dealt with in this book, it’s more of a straightforward memoir that philosophizes a little bit rather than being a work of inspirational non-fiction. So, without trying to upset the publicist on this one who gave me this read, the book jacket copy may not align with the contents of the book. All in all, the first third of it isn’t about being a surgeon at all! Rather, it focuses on the blue-collar jobs that Smith took on as a student in a coal factory and as a telephone linesman. So, if you’re looking for an autobiography from a common person in many respects, Nobility in Small Things will more than fit the bill.

Overall, I found the book to be mediocre. I say that not to be churlish, but I found things to admire in it and things to frown upon with it. I’ll start with the good first. Dr. Smith is an intelligent man. A very intelligent one. I break out this compliment on books that are a little above my pay grade to signal that I didn’t fully understand its contents — but some of that might be cultural. Dr. Smith is writing from an American perspective that doesn’t quite have the socialized health care that Canadians like me are accustomed to. Thus, he’s writing from a perspective that’s unique from mine — but that doesn’t make for a bad book. He’s had a long career that has allowed him the leeway to look at the healthcare system in the United States from a particular lens, and American readers who want to glean something from that will find much to enjoy and mull over here. I also found the story about the operation on Clinton to be interesting, which again isn’t an attempt to be charitable but an honest expression of admiration. I found sections of this work to be very humanistic and relatable, especially when Dr. Smith talks about losing his third daughter to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or SIDS. There’s plenty to involve and interest readers who want a human story about a man who has saved other lives.

However, the work can be antiseptic and clinical at times, which is probably a given since Dr. Smith is, well, a doctor. I did find myself skimming through various parts of the work that were of less interest to me, such as trialing a new form of heart surgery using lasers, which get very technical in the telling. Dr. Smith isn’t shy about using medical jargon and words that many readers may be unfamiliar with, which may limit this book’s appeal to the commoner. I also found that even the bits going through Dr. Smith’s work background before enrolling in medical school to be a bit dry and slow-going, especially as the good doctor assumes once again that the reader knows what it’s like to shovel coal into ovens and climb to the tops of telephone poles. And something that may charm or annoy certain readers is that Dr. Smith isn’t afraid of voicing his opinion on certain medical matters. Again, this might be something more of interest to an American reader as Dr. Smith waxes on about the need for hospitals to make money but at the disadvantage of providing limited service to those who are not so well off. Being Canadian, this is hard to relate to.

Still, I would strongly encourage anyone with an interest in the subject matter (heart surgery or heart transplantation) to give this book close attention. It may fascinate those who want to hear how a semi-famous surgeon goes about his workday and the things that are of interest to him. While I was disappointed that this book wasn’t quite the piece of inspirational non-fiction I was expecting, I found that once the medical aspect of the read kicked in, it generally got better and proved that the author’s passion for his subject matter was generally, well, contagious and sometimes leaped off the page. I also was enamored with the doctor’s candor: he relates more than a few instances where he failed to save a life and drily notes that he has been the subject of a series of malpractice suits (though he doesn’t go into any detail about their outcomes). All in all, Nobility in Small Things may become the “must-have” read on the shelves of future medical students and residents. Dr. Smith tells it like it is and lays his, pun intended, heart on the line with the revealing aspects of this book, which more often than not aims for the head. I didn’t find it to be perfect — though, not to sound like a broken record here, that may have been the result of differing expectations over the book’s content — but it shows that Dr. Smith is a double threat when it comes to being a surgeon and a writer. Having said that, and I hope this doesn’t sound like a criticism (because it’s not meant to be one at all!), I hope he doesn’t give up his day job. After all, some lives still need to be saved, and perhaps no more so than ever in this era of pandemic, even as it ebbs. To that end, this is a document of such tumultuous times and needs to be read by those who have an interest in science and medicine, who will probably be the audience that will get the most out of this one.

While I enjoyed the authors story of his early years, and how he went from being a telephone lineman to med school (a very different original story for a surgeon than I expected), this part of the book was quite broad, but not very deep. Stories were succinct, but not very enlightening. Everything was just kind of matter-of-fact.

In the section about religion, one of his quotes really stood out. “It takes confidence to see unity that encompasses diversity, rather than seeing identity as a fortress within diversity.” However, later in the book, as he was talking about more current social justice issues and the implications for the medical profession, he forgot this insight from his early years and showed his true colors.

His beliefs about the Covid vaccines and the various public health actions that took place don’t look great in hindsight. The sections about getting through the pandemic as a member of a large urban hospital management team never really came to life.

The author had a productive and successful life and career. Unfortunately, he didn’t do a very good job making it an interesting one.

[arc review]
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.
Nobility in Small Things releases October 10, 2023

Rating/reviewing memoirs is not an easy thing.
I want to put emphasis on this being the <b><u>path</u></b> of a surgeon.
I understand that every experience a person goes through in life leads them to where they are now, and I find beauty in that. Having said that, I found myself skimming a lot of the introductory chapters that weren’t medical based (steel working, telephone lines, etc.) and I’m not sure those had to be as detailed as they were. I would have liked there to been more focus on residency and the early stages of becoming a surgeon.

Some of the chapters were presented in a jarring way. For example, the one in which the author recounts the death of his child. I didn’t feel like there was any lead up to prepare me for such a hard-hitting scene.
This happens a few more times when mentioning the deaths of other colleagues.

My reading experience felt very scattered due to the constant jumping around in the timeline, so in that sense, it could’ve benefitted from more structure.

There was one part where the author was discussing his social anxiety, to which he compares approaching that to the likeness of having any other disability such as vertigo or Tourette’s.
As someone who actually has social anxiety, vertigo, and other disabilities, I would never navigate or compare disabilities on such a broad/equal playing field.

cw: mentions suicide, child death (SIDS), covid

This was an amazing read about life during Covid for a physician. The book took you behind the scenes and let you experience how they felt and what was going on at work and at home. The author was so real and easy to relate too. The book was very informative and definitely worth reading.

In a loquacious, informative, touching, even philosophical memoir, Nobility in Small Things: A Surgeon's Path, Dr. Craig Smith chronicles his journey from his oft-injured childhood to the Chair of Surgery at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, with many stops in between. Like many of us, Smith did not have an easy time choosing a career path and dropped out of graduate school. As a youngster, he enjoyed – perhaps “thrived” is a better word – on risk-taking. He and a buddy would sneak off to climb towers, rooftops, and other high places for thrills. Never mind that as a boy he suffered numerous fractures due to mishaps and sports injuries.

It may have been this endeavor to strive and succeed that pushed him toward more challenging, even dangerous jobs. He describes in great detail summer jobs at a steel company in Pennsylvania, where he describes the nitty-gritty work of working as a belt cleaner. Another dangerous job he held just before heading off to medical school was working for his father-in-law as a pole climber or the phone company. Who knew his earlier experience with heights would come in handy? However, the protracted descriptions of this job caused me to begin skimming the pages. I was waiting to hear about med school!

I was fascinated to learn that Dr. Smith was one of the early practitioners of heart-lung transplants. This field is not without its unhappy endings, as patients, especially in the early years, more often than not had poor survival rates due to infection or other complications. After years of success in this area, Smith returned to thoracic surgery.

His family was growing. There were some difficult moments there too. He and his wife Trish lost their daughter, Lydia, to sudden infant death syndrome. Later, daughter Halley developed osteomyelitis, a serious bone infection, which was addressed promptly but was frightening for her and her parents.

In later chapters, Dr. Smith discusses some of the financial and political burdens of medicine, Mortality and Morbidity Conferences, which are meant to help doctors and residents improve quality and openly discuss errors, accept responsibility and accountability, and recognize the needs of patients as the primary goal. As someone who lives in Rochester, Minnesota, and who worked at Mayo Clinic for a short time, I will paraphrase what Dr. Smith says in the words of the Mayo mantra: “The needs of the patient come first.”

I truly believe that Dr. Smith believes in medical ethics, that he acknowledges his imperfections and strives to do his best possible job for patients. I enjoyed reading about his career. I think that some chapters could do with some streamlining, however.

I received a digital copy of Nobility in Small Things as an ARC in exchange for my honest review. My thoughts and opinions are my own. Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and the author.

3.5 stars

Interesting life events. This book will be more interesting to those of us in and retired from the healthcare field than the general population. I loved that he describes being a bit of a wild child and was not coddled despite being a grandchild of MD's. He actually worked in some dangerous and dirty places to save money during his college years. I did find a few lags and it was difficult to follow as the book is written topic chapters rather than completely chronological. I believe he downplayed his intellect in all his schooling with the 'D' in calculus. Obviously he has an exceptional IQ and especially for the sciences as evidenced by his experience in research and a PHD before an MD. Anyone in healthcare can relate to the politics that transpire in hospitals,teaching hospitals and academia- it can be very competitive and brutal dealing with egos and power plays. I think he is trying to tell us that despite working on people of high rank and social status, he feels he has given as much of his talent to those less fortunate and that he has to see the organs he is repairing as that, organs, regardless of the body it inhabits. All in order to keep himself at bay so that it does not break him emotionally when there is a bad outcome, not due to his of his lack of trying. He skirts the issue of religion and personal beliefs which is fine, religion in itself is not the goal, a personal relationship with Jesus. A bit disappointing that he isn't able to outright say that God is the great physician and only through Him has his own hands been given the blessing of helping to heal. As for his Covid information, he is straightforward-handwashing and masks work as do the vaccines- . I looked up his bio and the daily notes to colleagues are available on line. I believe they add more of a personal touch to this memoir. I wish him well on his continued journey.
I was provided am advanced reader copy and was under no obligation to review this book. The opinions expressed are !y own. Many thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read this book.

Having spent over forty years in medicine, Dr. Smith, Chairman of the Department of Surgery at New York’s Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, thinks he’s seen it all. He’s even performed surgery on ex-President Clinton. When Covid overwhelms his hospital in March 2020, he quickly realizes its unprecedented challenges and crafts inspirational messages intended to buoy his overwhelmed staff. Little does he realize that these messages will find their way to social media and prove a balm to a national audience. Now Dr. Smith tells his full story, revealing how medicine has changed over the decades and offering a glimpse of life at one of Covid’s hardest hit areas.

You can tell this author is a doctor because his explanations are often intricate and detailed. He’s very interested in action and procedure rather than emotional nuance. Additionally, his writing lacks fluidity, with awkward transitions and apparent non sequiturs. That being said, Smith has a unique career trajectory and some interesting perspectives on the current state of medicine. It will appeal most to those interested in medicine and/or a look at societal shifts in the last half century.

I should have known that when I didn't like When Breath Becomes Air, that I wouldn't like this either.