Reviews - The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I

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738 reviews for:

The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I

Lindsey Fitzharris

4.28 AVERAGE

shinyobjects63's review against another edition

4.75

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

Whoa- this one’s staying with me for a long time. It’s often difficult to get through
without
hoping
that it
ends soon. This one was not the case, especially considering it was about war. The author did an amazing job of making each physician and patient into human beings that we care deeply about and the sacrifices they all made will never be forgotten.

calliejaneg's review against another edition

4.25

informative sad medium-paced

hanca's review against another edition

5.0

4.5 - I greatly enjoyed her other book, “The Butchering Art,” so I was very eager to read this one. I was not disappointed, Harold Gillies’ story is Fascinating and hopeful during a time of tragedy and prolonged violence.

One thing that I do appreciate about the author is that while she does go into depth about the subject of her book and each chapter topic (and does so with detail, care, and excellent writing) we are also given these quick little detours into some interesting facts that are not immediately connected to the topic she’s covering but are still relevant in some way. One example I can think of is when she started to extrapolate the development of prosthetic departments within hospitals. As she was getting started, she briefly mentioned a famous astronomer who lost his section of his nose in a duel and was rumored to have had a silver nose prosthetic up until his body was exhumed in 2010 and tests revealed the nose to be brass. Not exactly related but still very interesting. I appreciate these little details.

The epilogue left me misty-eyed, and I highly recommend this for anyone who enjoys nonfiction or would like to try or get started with reading nonfiction.