There are books that influence other books, and ideas that multiple authors undertake sometimes with wildly different results.

Better is a book that is accompanied with a healthy dose of Deju Vu. I have previously read Dr. Gawande’s “Being Mortal”, written years after Better – which was published in 2007, which had rocked my world and changed my perceptions on life, death, and above all quality of life. Better, therefore was a bit of a letdown. A lot of the stories, Better is essentially a collection of anecdotes, were familiar and there was no real great insight or overarching theme other than just to be “better.”

Perhaps because I am not a doctor, and yet know enough about how medicine and hospitals work from the fringes where veterinary medicine resides, that Better did not bowl me over as I was expecting. It is in fact telling, that Veterinary Medicine is not mentioned once in Dr. Gawande’s Better given that a lot of the issues he seeks to shed light on; medical costs, liability, and vaccinations are handled wildly differently by veterinarians than human doctors. There is a feeling that even though this is a book about looking at problems differently, the research has been performed on an ad hoc basis rather than in any systematic fashion.  

This is a book about out of the box thinking and overcoming inertia. Human medicine has become so specialized and therefore a victim of institutional dogma that change can easily been seen as heresy. Better suggests that it is often not the ideas that matter, particularly when those ideas fail create passion in others, so much as the people who champion those ideas.

It is not a book full of great revelations, it is a book that shows excellence and failure, and what those stories look like. The hope, upon reading such a work, is that others are inspired to replicate some of the ideas, or at least try not to stand in the way of those ideas when they are presented by others. And it is hard to argue the point that we can all do better, by being passionate and by not settling for the status quo.

All of this is not to say that Better is not enjoyable. These are interesting, and at times inspiring, tales that are worth reading. This is not a book to change your view of the world, I suspect not even in human medicine, but it is possible at this is too high a standard to hold any book to.

Dr. Gawande’s other books do have the reputation for this incredible high standard, but is it ok the settle for just being entertained and to find something interesting.