Improved technology and generations of organized medical research have provided doctors with little more than a fair guess at what's really going on inside the human body. Concrete, physical ailments like broken bones are fairly easy to understand and treat, but information on the viruses, bacterial infections, and psychological weaknesses that portend corporeal disrepair remains vague. Though doctors do remarkably well considering what they have to work with, that's cold comfort to the patient stuck in a waiting room for an hour, unable to breathe deeply and unsure why. Boston surgeon Atul Gawande writes about the fascinations of modern medicine for The New Yorker and Slate, and his book Complications: A Surgeon's Notes On An Imperfect Science collects his thoughtful articles, each half essay and half reportage. Complications consists of three sections: In "Fallibility," Gawande writes about the mistakes doctors make out of ignorance and arrogance; in "Mystery," he trots out a string of strange cases, from people with chronic nausea and blushing to morbidly obese patients who have to resort to unpleasant, lifestyle-changing gastric bypass surgery; and in "Uncertainty," he explains how the mutating relationship between doctors and patients has led to a crisis in medical decision-making. Gawande is a remarkably clear writer, light on technical jargon and heavy on description of human interaction. Shrugging off the old saying that surgeons can be "often wrong, never in doubt," Gawande frankly explores criticisms about the ways doctors are trained, and contemplates the contradictions inherent in patients who want the best care possible, but can't accept that even top-flight practitioners have to learn through a process of trial and (potentially fatal) error. Still, Gawande keeps a positive frame of mind, with a bent toward honesty and reform. He hits two themes hard: first, that the practice of medicine can be improved by an increase in specialization, to make routine procedures so efficient that errors become a statistical improbability; and second, that doctors and patients alike should consider the effects of illness on the mind and vice versa, in order to better understand the meaning of abstract concepts like pain. Complications is highly readable just as a string of ER-worthy hospital mini-dramas, but the sense that Gawande has something important to impart alongside the anecdotes makes the book not just entertaining, but righteous.