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Thomas H. Lee. Eugene Braunwald and the Rise of Modern Medicine. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013. xii + 383 pp. Ill. $35.00 (978-0-674-72497-6).
Eugene Braunwald is unquestionably the most influential American cardiologist since Paul Dudley White (1886-1973), and this well-written book provides insight into his six-decade career that coincided with dramatic developments in the care of patients with heart disease. Born in 1929 in Vienna, Braunwald was fortunate to have escaped to England in the summer of 1938, a few months after Nazi Germany annexed Austria. His family arrived in Brooklyn the following year. Braunwald was sixteen years old when he started college at New York University. He remained at NYU for medical school and then served as an intern at Mount Sinai Hospital. By this time, Braunwald had already developed a special interest in heart disease, stimulated in part by his exposure to Charles Friedberg, a renowned physician and author of a popular cardiology textbook.
Braunwald understands the significance of serendipity and the importance of seizing opportunities. Thomas Lee's biography includes several examples of these phenomena. In 1954 Braunwald started working in André Cournand's cardiac catheterization...