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Critical Care Medicine www.ccmjournal.org e345 Hurt: The Inspiring, Untold Story of Trauma Care promises an exploration of the genesis of trauma systems in the United States. The book opens with a dedication to First Responders, and yet, their presence is diminutive throughout the 209-page offering. Written by a pediatric surgeon, Hurt is surgeon-centric with very little time spent addressing emergency medicine (EM). Injured patients who do not need a surgeon still require evaluation—a space that is filled by EM providers. Indeed, the emergence of EM as a specialty is conspicuously absent and belies the team approach to trauma care that embraces multiple providers from a wide variety of disciplines. Hurt’s prose appears designed to capture the “drama of trauma” as opposed to the mechanics that drove the creation of trauma systems. Accordingly, Hurt is unlikely to appeal to those who provide trauma care but may instead resonate with those who have received it. Her work also seems to divorce time spent in training from focused care and instead ascribes patient care success to “luck and instinct.” Perhaps shaped by her early exposure to emergency care, the text vilifies, in particular, those trained in Internal Medicine working in the Emergency Department during the pre-9-1-1 and pretrauma system era. In stark contrast, the reader is presented with interesting facts about systems and patient care in the pre-emergency medical services, pre-9-1-1 era drawn from her hometown experiences. Nonetheless, carefully selected phraseology such as “naked stalks of protruding bone” pepper the text seeking to evoke equal measures of revulsion and interest. The author injects unnecessary mystery into the harsh realities of battlefield medicine in describing “a blast of weather that freezes bodies into lifeless bricks” in an attempt, perhaps, to elevate injury and failed management into a supernatural event rather than a testament to human frailty and the fledgling efforts of an emerging system. The genesis of trauma systems is punctuated by facts, timelines, and glimpses into the personal motivations of those who shaped trauma networks and their underpinning legislation. However, the author seems intent on capitalizing on current themes—including racial tension—and thereby detracts from key messages in a bald attempt to create sensationalism. Early EMS training and deployment as well as blood banking suffer from such treatment. The remainder of the book is strewn with anachronisms placing the nonmedically sophisticated reader at risk of embracing incorrect information regarding medial education, scene care, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and shock. Her heroes, like R. Adams Cowley, MD, are raised to visionary and almost god-like status, creating a vast gulf between heroes and those who are little or dismissively mentioned. Sections of the book serve as a stage on which she airs personal views regarding firearm injuries, wilderness medicine, and avoidable human error, not all of which appear connected to the “untold story of trauma care.” Hurt’s latter third dives into the sequelae of injury recounting advances in plastic surgery, traumatic brain injury. and rehabilitation medicine but is embattled by awkward phraseology such as “it takes a lot of force to break a brain” that are unsupported, and at odds with the author’s academic accomplishments. Importantly, she misses current key themes such as the persistent inflammation, infection and catabolism syndrome or the post-intensive care syndrome, both of which impact trauma care within the ICU and years thereafter. Despite promising to take the reader on a time traveling journey to discover the genesis of U.S. trauma systems and care, Hurt instead traps the reader in a loosely connected series of sensational stories, selected timelines, and current tensions admixed with small town flavor. Worse, Hurt is poised to offend the quite disenfranchised first responders to whom the book is purportedly dedicated, as they make only rare cameo appearances as shadows of Dr. Musemeche’s surgical and public health heroes.