The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right - Hardcover

Gawande, Atul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805091742 ISBN 13: 9780805091748

Publisher: Metropolitan Books, 2009

Synopsis

Metropolitan Books

About this title

Review:

Amazon Exclusive: Malcolm Gladwell Reviews The Checklist Manifesto

Malcolm Gladwell was named one of TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2005. He is most recently the author of What the Dog Saw (a collection of his writing from The New Yorker) as well as the bestsellers Outliers, The Tipping Point, and Blink. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of The Checklist Manifesto:

Over the past decade, through his writing in The New Yorker magazine and his books Complications and Better, Atul Gawande has made a name for himself as a writer of exquisitely crafted meditations on the problems and challenges of modern medicine. His latest book, The Checklist Manifesto, begins on familiar ground, with his experiences as a surgeon. But before long it becomes clear that he is really interested in a problem that afflicts virtually every aspect of the modern world--and that is how professionals deal with the increasing complexity of their responsibilities. It has been years since I read a book so powerful and so thought-provoking.

Gawande begins by making a distinction between errors of ignorance (mistakes we make because we don't know enough), and errors of ineptitude (mistakes we made because we don’t make proper use of what we know). Failure in the modern world, he writes, is really about the second of these errors, and he walks us through a series of examples from medicine showing how the routine tasks of surgeons have now become so incredibly complicated that mistakes of one kind or another are virtually inevitable: it's just too easy for an otherwise competent doctor to miss a step, or forget to ask a key question or, in the stress and pressure of the moment, to fail to plan properly for every eventuality. Gawande then visits with pilots and the people who build skyscrapers and comes back with a solution. Experts need checklists--literally--written guides that walk them through the key steps in any complex procedure. In the last section of the book, Gawande shows how his research team has taken this idea, developed a safe surgery checklist, and applied it around the world, with staggering success.

The danger, in a review as short as this, is that it makes Gawande’s book seem narrow in focus or prosaic in its conclusions. It is neither. Gawande is a gorgeous writer and storyteller, and the aims of this book are ambitious. Gawande thinks that the modern world requires us to revisit what we mean by expertise: that experts need help, and that progress depends on experts having the humility to concede that they need help. --Malcolm Gladwell

Review:

"I read The Checklist Manifesto in one sitting yesterday, which is an amazing tribute to the book that Gawande has crafted. Not only is the book loaded with fascinating stories, but it honestly changed the way I think about the world. It is the best book I've read in ages." --Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics

"Few medical writers working today can transmit the gore-drenched terror of an operation that suddenly goes wrong--a terror that has a special resonance when it is Dr. Gawande himself who makes the initial horrifying mistake. And few can make it as clear as he can what exactly is at stake in the effort to minimize calamities." --The New York Times

"Even skeptical readers will find the evidence staggering. . . . Thoughtfully written and soundly defended, this book calls for medical professionals to improve patient care by adopting a basic, common-sense approach." --The Washington Post

"A persuasive champion of his cause." --The Economist

"The Checklist Manifesto is beautifully written, engaging, and convincingly makes the case for adopting checklists in medicine, a project to which Gawande has devoted significant time over the last several years. . . . It is in many ways the most personal of his books, a direct call to action to change the way health care is delivered through straightforward and simple, yet proven, means. It is a call that deserves to be heard and heeded." --Journal of the American Medical Association

"Gawande deftly weaves in examples of checklist successes in diverse fields like aviation and skyscraper construction. . . . Fascinating reading." --New York Times Book Review

"This is a brilliant book about an idea so simple it sounds dumb until you hear the case for it. Atul Gawande presents an argument so strong that I challenge anyone to go away from this book unconvinced." --The Seattle Times

"Fascinating . . . presents a convincing case that adopting more checklists will surely help." --Bloomberg News

"Gawande argues convincingly and eloquently." --San Francisco Chronicle

"The scope goes well beyond medicine. . . Read this book and you might find yourself making checklists for the most mundane tasks--and be better off for it." --BusinessWeek

"A vivid, punchy exposition of an intriguing idea: that by-the-book routine trumps individual prowess." --Publishers Weekly

"Maintains the balance between accessibility and precision. He manages to be vivid without being gruesome. . . ." --The Guardian (UK)

"Riveting and thought-provoking." --The Times (UK)

"Eye-popping. . . Gawande writes with vigor and clarity." --New Haven Advocate

"Gawande manages to capture medicine in all of its complex and chaotic glory, and to put it, still squirming with life, down on the page. With this book, Gawande inspires all of us, doctor or not, to be better." --The New York Times Book Review on Better

"Gawande is unassuming in every way, and yet his prose is infused with steadfast determination and hope. If society is the patient here, I can't think of a better guy to have our back." --The Boston Globe on Better

"Remarkable . . . Brings to modern high-tech medicine the same clinical watchfulness that writers such as Williams and Sacks have brought to bear on the lives and emotions of often fragile patients." --Sherwin B. Nuland
, The New York Review of Books, on Better

"Gawande is a writer with a scalpel pen and an X-ray eye. Diagnosis: riveting." --TIME, on Better

About this edition

• Publisher: Metropolitan Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0805091742
• ISBN 13: 9780805091748
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224