The Bookshelf: Aug. 18, 2015

Trib+Health is joining with respected books authority Kirkus Reviews to bring you select reviews of books of note in the field of health care. For more book reviews and recommendations, visit Kirkus.com.

ALPHA DOCS: The Making of a Cardiologist

by Daniel Muñoz, James M. Dale

After an introduction, the opening section of this memoir of a year of fellowship rotations at Johns Hopkins hospital — a fellowship is a three-to-four–year, post-residency position overseeing residents while being overseen by an attending specialist — is ill-advised. ... But forgive these mercifully few pages to get a quite satisfying immersion into what medical specialization requires. Muñoz thankfully shifts from embarrassingly tedious to humanely sympathetic as he chronicles how he had to acquire a measure of expertise in what can be described as stations of the cardiology cross: consultation, nuclear medicine, heart failure and transplantation, intensive care, electrophysiology, echocardiography, and more. ... He shines, however, in explaining a wide variety of conditions, and there is polish to the patient vignettes, giving them deeply human appeal.

For the full review, visit kirkus.com.