Fifty Beating Wonders

Like When Breath Becomes Air, Being Mortal and The Emperor of All Maladies, Fifty Beating Wonders is a stunning book about the magnificent complexity of the human body and the miracle of being human. It is absorbing, uplifting, moving and celebratory - a wonder indeed.

Fifty Beating Wonders is a book about the marvels and majesty of the human body, by an emergency physician who has spent the last thirty-five years doing her utmost to fix those bodies when they come to her broken.

Over the course of one shift, and one catastrophic motorcycle crash, this spellbinding narrative takes us into the mind of a doctor trying to figure out why her heart is beating so fast every time she enters the hospital, and deep into the wonders of our astonishing biology, revealing that in every unsung, overlooked part of us, there is absurdity, marvel, awe and surprise.

A joyous love song to the body, Fifty Beating Wonders shows what really happens inside an emergency department - the striving, the failures, the triumphs - and confronts us with the most wondrous and perplexing question of all: what makes us human?

PRAISE FOR FIFTY BEATING WONDERS:

'A soaring work of incredible insight and elegance' Sarah Krasnostein, The Mushroom Tapes

'What a remarkable book! Michelle Johnston walks a gleaming wire across a torrent of emergency room action and medical miracles, never once overbalancing. How a book can be both nurturing and breakneck I don't know, but apparently it can - because here it is' Tegan Bennett Daylight, The Details

'This book of wonders throws up the curtain for us mortals to see our miraculous messy bodies and the deepest wishes and fears of those magicians that fix us' Tim Rogers, Detours

'A scintillating love letter to the human body - and the people who inhabit them. A essential book for every medical student and young doctor, but also anyone who has ever been a patient' Neela Janakiramanan, The Registrar