No one would have blamed Donald Seldin for running away. When he arrived at Southwestern Medical College in 1951, it was a collection of hastily repurposed military shacks creaking in the wind. On practically day one he became chair of the department of medicine—when the only other full-time professors departed.

By the time he stepped down thirty-six years later, Seldin had transformed a sleepy medical college into the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center—a powerhouse of research and patient care and an anchor of the city of Dallas. Raymond Greenberg, a physician-scholar, tells Seldin's story of perseverance and intellectual triumph. Drawing on interviews with Seldin's trainees and colleagues—and on Seldin's own words—Greenberg chronicles the life of the Brooklyn boy who became one of Texas's foremost citizens and taught decades of men and women to heal. A pioneering nephrologist, Seldin devoted his career to developing the specialty; educating students, residents, and fellows; caring for patients; and nurturing basic research.

Seldin was a wildcatter in the best sense. He declined the comfortable prestige of Harvard and Yale and instead embraced a worthy challenge with an unflagging sense of mission. Graceful and richly detailed, The Maestro of Medicine captures an inspiring life of achievement and service.

Educating Medical Teachers explores the history of educational research programs for the health professions since 1955, when the first Project in Medical Education was initiated at the University of Buffalo. With characteristic wit and with the unique perspective of his central position in this field, George Miller describes the evolution and vicissitudes of educational research units and their impact on the medical establishment. Miller also traces the trend in educational research away from a narrow concern with pedagogical problems to a reexamination of the purpose and direction of the medical school itself. He sees a major role for educational research in accommodating the concurrent societal demands for academic excellence and for a more efficient healthcare delivery system, but he argues that, to be effective, educationists must first enhance their own prestige within the medical community. Miller's analysis of past failures makes a sound case for the prescriptions of his concluding chapter.

This second volume completes the story begun in Walter B. Cannon: The Life and Times of a Young Scientist (Belknap Press, 1987), tracing the middle and late years of one of America’s most distinguished medical scientists.

It resumes during World War II with Cannon’s battlefield work on traumatic shock in England and France, and follows him to Harvard Medical School as he investigated the workings of the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system, reaffirmed his emergency theory of the sympathico-adrenal system, and developed his now-famous concept of homeostasis and pioneer contributions to the newly emerging field of neuroendocrinology. This volume also recounts Cannon’s work with society on a broader scale, including defending the practice of animal experimentation, the rescue of European medical émigrés fleeing the Nazis and Fascists, and providing medical aid to the Spanish Loyalists and to China. Moreover, as a senior statesman of science, Cannon helped guide policies and programs that shaped the future of medical research, practice, and education.