This book was a bit more dense than I was hoping for but when I was in the right mood - I really enjoyed it. There is so much interesting history that goes hand in hand with the heart that I had no idea about until I read this book.

I really thought I would like this book, given that I was born with a congenital heart defect. My hope in reading Heart: A History, was I would gain a better understanding of my own heart. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay interested in the content. By the time I went to pick it back up again, I had lost all curiosity for the book and didn't finish it.

In popular culture, the heart is inextricably entwined with feelings, even though we know today that emotions don’t originate in this powerful organ that pumps blood nonstop for decades. But its work and its health are very likely more tied to our feelings than researchers in recent decades had thought. We’ve quite possibly reached a point where addressing risk factors like smoking and eating a poor diet, not to mention using now-standard interventions, have stopped making a big reduction in the incidence of heart attacks and the numbers of cases of heart disease, cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar says. Our approach now must include lifestyle changes that reduce the negative emotions and stress that are harming our hearts.

This isn’t to say Heart: A History doesn’t spend most of its pages going over the history of how the heart has been seen by various cultures and medical practitioners and the advances in treating it. Jauhar says, “This book is about what the heart is, how it has been handled by medicine, and how we can most wisely live with — as well as by — our hearts in the future.” He shares the stories of innovators, largely in the past century or so, who developed the tests and treatments used widely today, such as the pacemaker, the internal and external defibrillators, and angiograms and angioplasty. Jauhar also shares his own story and that of his family; both of his grandfathers died of heart attacks. He talks about his subsequent fascination with the heart even as a boy and about his training and work as a cardiologist.

The whole book is informative and easy for the non-medical reader to understand. Jauhar is a skilled and experienced writer and while I have his other books on my to-read lists, I have yet to get to them, so I am glad I had the opportunity to read this one. I found myself relating interesting tidbits and reading passages aloud to my husband, which is always a good indication that a nonfiction book is catching my interest and getting my train of thought moving. It’s educational in a non-textbook way and, once again, a reminder to us all that we must do better to take care of ourselves emotionally to truly take better care of this organ that has yet to be replaced — since even though, as the book also talks about, teams have tried to craft and implant a mechanical heart, no one has lived very long using one.

I have worked my entire nursing career in a cardiac hospital so I was very interested in Sandeep Jauhar’s book titled Heart: A History. Dr. Jauhar is a cardiologist and a very good writer. The book gives an interesting history of how cardiac care has advanced throughout the years and it is written in layman’s terms so everyone can enjoy it. I especially liked his stories about his patients. I read his first book, Intern, many years ago so I was anxious to read his latest book and I was not disappointed.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced reader’s copy. This is my unbiased review.

I am a big fan of the author and his writing, and HEART did not disappoint. There were many facts about the heart (some obscure, some not) interspersed throughout the book to complement patient stories. We read about the author as a young boy and his personal desire to work in cardiology, stemming from the story of a relative’s death during his formative years. The author comes across as a caring and knowledgeable doctor with a kind bedside manner – there are no veiled frustrations or jabs at ornery patients, as I have read in other medical books.

One of the best things about the book is that it’s part history, part medicine, part almost-gory-but-not-overly-done, and part philosophy. Each chapter can stand alone and be read a few days apart without having to remember the plot or which patient he is discussing. Thoughtful illustrations are added to underscore the meaning of the chapters, and footnotes are added to provide explanations or information without slowing down the flow of the narrative. The book strikes a great balance of science and interesting plot without slowing down the narrative with a lot of detail that the average reader without a medical background wouldn’t understand. For someone like me, with a medical background, there were also enough facts to keep me interested. Some books minimize details to make it easy for the reader; Jauhar does not do that. This makes his books fascinating and eminently readable.

This was a great read. The author, a cardiologist, alternates between stories from his own life revolving around him personally, and the history of different medical breakthroughs having to with treating the heart. He is an engaging writer and the book was a fascinating read. I highly recommend it.

I read an advanced reading copy from Farrar, Straus and Giroux via NetGalley. Thanks.