This is a must read book - excellent!

A warts and all memoir that plunges the reader head first into the fascinating and fragile world of a brain surgeon. Alongside vivid descriptions of human anatomy are the raw confessions of a man driven at times by his arrogance and at other times driven by his compassion, an aspect of humanity that Marsh openly battles with throughout his writing. It was harrowing to discover the difficulties faced by what I deemed to be an exact, yet deeply challenging, branch of medicine. Marsh's openness is a credit to his writing, and his admission that mistakes are easy to make, especially when driven by the desperate need to impress your intimidating peers, left me equally awestruck and terrified. His writing dallies between his own life, outside of medicine and, more frequently, into the brief encounters his has with his patients, those that he saves, those who have longer to spend with families and friends, those who he leaves in a vegetative state due to unavoidable catastrophe or his own over confidence and lastly, those that perish in spite of or as a result of his actions. It is a world I did not envy, one that, through Marsh's admission, ruined his first marriage and requires enough detachment and strength of mind that you can get through the stress of walking into an operating theatre and facing the chance you might fail. Marsh also explores the changes that have occurred during the length of his career, one that seems to irk him the most is the dwindling of respect for both his skills and the needs of his patients. There are some interesting questions raised here about the declining state of our National Health Service, questions posed by those that work within its bowels rather than the patients. Marsh's writing puts the reader straight into the heart of his operations, vivid descriptions completely submerge you inside the grey matter of his patients and his ability to recall the drama faced by himself and his team is tangible. It was refreshing to find a memoir on such a complex, academic subject so easy to read, Marsh truly knows how to reel in the reader, I was hooked until the very end. Overall, a fresh, exciting well written memoir that demands to be read, not only by those who have had friends or family who have endured the challenging, mysterious world of brain surgery, as patient or practitioner, but also by anyone curious and fearless enough to learn about a riveting, pressure driven career with rules that blur at the most tragic of times.

This is a very different kind of book - part autobiography, part layman's guide to the brain. Over all of this floats a discussion of the fragility of life - how we deal with tragedy when it happens to us, to those who we love or when we feel responsible for that tragedy taking place. I found 'Do No Harm' to be refreshingly human. So much of western medicine has a reputation for being mechanical, clinical and unemotional but Mr Marsh shows that it's anything but. Fascinating, traumatic, and positive.

He tells it as it is, each day as it comes brings a new (sometimes eventful) challenge. Written from a diary but made into a story with all areas "joined up". An enjoyable read for someone who has undergone a tumor removal some time ago (Acoustic neuroma) - fairly simple compared with some of the stuff undertaken!

Henry Marsh will already be known to many thanks to the extraordinary documentaries, Your Life in Their Hands and The English Surgeon; however reading this, his extraordinary memoir, proves that there is much to learn about the man, as well as his chosen profession. Marsh became a neurosurgeon in 1987 and over a long and distinguished career he has truly had his share of good and bad days (to understate matters somewhat). As a neurosurgeon he has regularly held people's lives in his hands, and he candidly admits just how horribly things can sometimes go wrong. But more often than not things go well, and Marsh's joy in his chosen career and the life-changing options it has afforded so many of his patients abundantly shines through. This is an incredible read, not just for those in the medical profession, but for anyone who wants to understand the human brain more.