So Much Better Than Wide-Awake Surgery and Patriarchical Bullshit

Ladies and gentlemen, this is no humbug.

After 15 years of research, Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz has much to tell you about Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter, the surgeon who pioneered the use of anesthesia and reconstructive surgery and "changed the face of medicine forever." And about the collection of medical curiosities and technology – the Mütter Museum – donated by the good doctor to The College of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1858 and still available for your edification and entertainment in these more digital times.

This is the sort of subject, covered in the new book Dr. Mütter's Marvels (just released by Penguin's Gotham Books division), that we reckon anyone with a touch of human curiosity would want to know more about. How lucky, then, for the interested reader, that it was written by Austin-based poet and writer Aptowicz, a woman whose various awards and publications attest to her formidable skill and style when dealing with an impressive diversity of subjects. Leave it to the NEA-backed author of Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam – a volume chronicling, you might say, modern linguistic oddities and technology – to provide such a thorough and compelling account of Mütter's life and times, his medical innovations and personal fortitude, his enduring legacy, as is to be found between the well-designed covers of this new book.

BONUS: You don't have to read what ramblings we might have to relate about this literary event, because here's a much better opportunity: Aptowicz herself will be presenting Dr. Mütter's Marvels at BookPeople on Friday, Sept. 19, 7pm.

We hope to see you there in good health and humors!