Craig A. Miller, A Time for All Things

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, Michael DeBakey towered over the international surgery community. Due to his contributions to vascular and cardiac surgery, he became – and remains - one of the few surgeons with household name recognition. Despite the breadth and enormity of his achievements, no book-length biography of the physician existed, a deficit the author, Craig Miller, noted when researching Robert Zollinger, another luminary in American surgery.1 Miller, himself a practicing vascular surgeon, set about rectifying this historical lacuna in an expansive account chronicling the life and accomplishments of Michael Ellis DeBakey. DeBakey was born to parents who had emigrated from Lebanon and started a successful pharmacy and real estate businesses in Lake Charles, LA. Matriculating to Tulane, he trained under legendary mentors Alton Oschner and Rudolf Matas, themselves scions of the surgical community. Already a rising star in 1941, DeBakey interrupted his education to volunteer for the Army during World War II. Serving in the consultant’s division of the Office of the Surgeon General, DeBakey reformed the surgical management of wounded soldiers through a series of programs that extended from the Auxiliary Surgical Teams on the front lines to specialty care centers back in the United States. In so doing, he established professional connections with surgical leaders throughout the country as well as with the political establishment in Washington, DC, fostering relationships that later helped advance his ambitious career.

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