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The Open Heart Club

A Story about Birth and Death and Cardiac Surgery

Contributors

By Gabriel Brownstein

Formats and Prices

Price

$21.99

Price

$28.99 CAD

This absorbing and poignant book is not merely the story of one writer’s flawed heart. It is a history of cardiac medicine, a candid personal journey, and a profound reflection on mortality.

Born in 1966 with a congenital heart defect known as the tetralogy of Fallot, Gabriel Brownstein entered the world just as doctors were learning to operate on conditions like his. He received a life-saving surgery at five years old, and since then has ridden wave after wave of medical innovation, a series of interventions that have kept his heart beating.

The Open Heart Club is both a memoir of a life on the edge of medicine’s reach and a history of the remarkable people who have made such a life possible. It begins with the visionary anatomists of the seventeenth century, tells the stories of the doctors (all women) who invented pediatric cardiology, and includes the lives of patients and physicians struggling to understand the complexities of the human heart. The Open Heart Club is a riveting work of compassionate storytelling, a journey into the dark hinterlands between sickness and health lit by bright moments of humor and inspiration.

On Sale
Apr 2, 2024
Page Count
368 pages
Publisher
PublicAffairs
ISBN-13
9781610399487

Gabriel Brownstein

About the Author

Gabriel Brownstein is the author of three previous books, most recently The Open Heart Club. For his short stories, he’s won a PEN/Hemingway Award and a Pushcart Prize. He’s an English professor at St. John’s University in New York City.

Learn more about this author