Tonight’s virtual event was by Dr. Henry Buchwald of the UMN discussing his new book Surgical Renaissance in the Heartland. A fun event, Henry had lots of stories about his early years at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Owen Wangensteen, and the culture shock of coming to Minnesota.
Here is the blurb for the event and book:
“Please join Henry Buchwald on Wednesday, June 10 at 6:00 p.m. CDT for the launch of his new book, Surgical Renaissance in the Heartland, moderated by the University of Minnesota Press’s regional editor, Erik Anderson. This event is co-sponsored by The Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine, whose collections contain materials and objects that broadly represent health, medicine, and biological sciences from 1430-1945.
About the book: In 1960, fresh out of a stint in the Air Force, Henry Buchwald was recruited by Dr. Owen H. Wangensteen to join the Department of Surgery at the University of Minnesota Medical School. For an American born in Austria, a child of the Holocaust, a position in a city then considered by some to be the “anti-Semitic capital of the United States” might seem an uneasy fit, but in the culture of innovation created by Wangensteen, Buchwald, who had chafed against the rigidity of East Coast medical practice, found everything an imaginative young surgeon could have asked for.
Buchwald describes the roots, heritage, and traditions of this remarkable period at the University of Minnesota Medical School, where the foundations of open-heart procedures, heart and pancreas transplantation, bariatric surgery, implantable infusion pump therapies, and other medical landmarks originated.
Surgical Renaissance in the Heartland is the story of a golden era in American surgery, ushered in by Wangensteen’s creative approach to medical practice, told by one who lived it” (https://www.continuum.umn.edu/event/virtual-book-launch-surgical-renaissance-in-the-heartland-a-memoir-of-the-wangensteen-era/).