This book explores World War I and its aftermath through the work of Harold Gillies, a pioneering plastic surgeon who treated soldiers with disfiguring wounds.

In many ways it's hard to comprehend this time period. The book states that the technology of war and destruction had jumped massively ahead of other technologies, and the extent of that truth is mind boggling. They were dropping bombs by hand from biplanes. Anesthesia was in its infancy, and they were just chloroforming people with rags on the operating table. They had no antibiotics, and blood transfusions under only ideal, cumbersome circumstances. Antiseptic surgery had only been standard for thirty or forty years.

Imagine, under those circumstances, trying to reconstruct the face of a man who'd had his entire jaw, mouth, and nose turned into a gaping hole. Imagine NOT reconstructing his face, and just sewing up the holes as best you can and telling him to go on with life. A complete person, healthy and alert, the same guy he was when he went off to war - just with no face.

This book tells us a little about the background of WWI, a little about the life of Harold Gillies as a person, and a little about the background of plastic surgery and medical science in general. It spends the bulk of its work, however, on Gillies' work as he developed from a regular doctor into the guy doing facial reconstruction work of a kind that had never been done before.

I learned a lot, and was alternately interested, saddened, and horrified throughout the whole read.