Ticker The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart

Swartz shows just how hard it can be to replicate nature's greatest creation-- a human heart. Part investigative journalism, part medical mystery, she covers fifty years of false starts, abysmal failures, and miraculous triumphs, as experienced by one of the world's foremost heart surgeons, O.H. "Bud" Frazier. At the Texas Heart Institute, the roadblocks to success-- medical setbacks, technological shortcomings, government regulations-- are immense. Swartz follows the history of heart surgery, the first heart transplant, and the artificial heart while following Frazier's quixotic quest. -- adapted from publisher info.