Sandwiched between Dr. Samuel Shem’s hilarious The House of God and Dr. Eric Manheimer’s Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital, Dr. Stewart Lazow’s A Surgeon’s Memoir: 40 Years at the County takes us on the author’s convoluted journey to becoming professor, vice chairman, oral and maxillofacial surgery residency program director, and director of service at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Throughout his forty years as a surgeon, Dr. Stewart Lazow witnessed countless patient encounters—some comical, some tragic, some that confirmed his faith in the human spirit—in addition to shocking resident foibles. He had his share of rewarding cases and heartbreaking failures and was utterly dismayed by a fractured, grossly inefficient healthcare delivery system.

The County wasn’t for everyone. He was just a “County guy.”