Journey into the Heart: A Tale of Pioneering Doctors and Their Race to Transform Cardiovascular Medicine

This engrossing if overwritten account pays tribute to the unconventional heroes of the past century who have greatly enhanced human life expectancy. Monagan, a medical journalist, and Williams, head of interventional cardiology at Brown/Rhode Island Hospital, dedicate the bulk of their well-researched story to Andreas Gruentzig, an East German refugee who landed at Atlanta's Emory University in 1980 and whose balloon angioplasty breakthroughs have meant knifeless surgery for millions of patients. Another doctor who earlier changed the face of cardiovascular medicine was Nobel laureate and repentant former Nazi Werner Forssmann, an impetuous German who had performed death-defying experiments on himself in the 1920s, including threading a catheter into his heart—the first time the feat was ever performed on a human subject. An early specialist in pediatric cardiology in the Cleveland Clinic in the 1950s, Mason Sones pioneered fluoroscopic pinpoint mappings of the hidden recesses of the coronary arteries, paving the way for coronary bypass surgery. People suffering from—and surviving—cardiovascular disease may be curious to read about the advances that have saved their lives. (Feb. 1)