Atul Gawande performs surgery on medicine itself, laying bare a science that is complicated, perplexing and profoundly human. Dramatic true stories explore how mistakes occur, why good surgeons go bad, and what happens when medicine comes up against the inexplicable: an architect with incapacitating back pain but no physical cause; a young woman with nausea that won’t go away; a TV newscaster whose blushing is so severe that she cannot do her job.