This book may save your life as one in ten of the people reading this will have an operation in the next 12 months. The operation will probably be a general surgical one, maybe planned or maybe an emergency. For emergency surgery in particular, the main area of general surgery relates to the large bowel. As yet there is no other book which describes that operation or the people likely to be doing it. These are things it may be worth knowing before that operation rather than after. It also tells from a father and son perspective the story of British general surgery, and how it has changed in their 50 years of service to the NHS. In doing so, my purpose is not to knock this establishment, which still beats private medicine in almost every way (other than their hospital sandwiches). In fact, the NHS is probably the worst health system in the world... apart from all the others. This book is based on the real lives of surgeons.It discusses the risk compared to benefit of operations for patients but also surgeons, who may use this as a self-help book to avoid the pitfalls of past surgeons. It has been described as an edgy and thought provoking but also philosphical and light-hearted look inside the world of surgical life.