Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preface : men who dared to fail -- The long and rugged road : the first 2,500 years -- The first steps forward : boldness and delicacy (Robert Gross, Clarence Crafoord) -- Blue babies : the battle to save their lives (Alfred Blalock, Russell Brock) -- The seeing finger : opening obstructed valves (Charles Bailey, Dwight Harken) -- Six minutes! : hypothermia and the race against time (Wilfred Bigelow, F. John Lewis, Henry Swan) -- Far-fetched ideas : the concept of the heart-lung machine (Clarence Dennis, John Gibbon Jr., Viking Bjork, Ake Senning) -- Innovation and risk : the golden Minneapolis era (C. Walton Lillehei, Richard Varco) -- The iceman cometh : establishing the heart-lung machine (John Kirklin) -- Bionic men : artificial materials and mechanical valves (Arthur Vorhees, Charles Hufnagel, and Albert Starr) -- Life from death : human valve transplants (Donald Ross and Brian Barrett-Boyes) -- The flood gates open : surgery for coronary artery disease (Vasilii Kolesov and Rene Favaloro) -- The ultimate operation : heart transplantation (Norman Shumway, James Hardy, and Christiaan Barnard) -- In the realm of science fiction : mechanical hearts (Willem Kolff, Michael Debakey, Denton Cooley, and William Devries) -- The right stuff : those magnificent men and their heart-lung machines.