Non-Fiction
Praise for DR. MÜTTER’S MARVELS
[Click publication names to read full reviews]
“[Aptowicz’s] poetic eye is exactly what makes Dr. Mütter’s Marvels a marvel itself….With clinical precision, Aptowicz lays bare the facts of Mütter’s colorful, tumultuous life….For a book so immersed in the intimate perspective of its subject, it also brings a broad perspective about everything from the development of modern medicine to women’s issues of the 19th century, not to mention how norms of beauty and the definitions of monstrosity have inspired and held us back over the centuries. With Dr. Mütter’s Marvels, Aptowicz keeps a steady hand on her historical scalpel, even as she wields it with a winning flourish.”
⎯ NPR Books
“Ms. Aptowicz rescues Mütter the man from undeserved obscurity, recreating his short life and hard times with wit, energy and gusto. Her book, like the Mütter Museum, is a reminder that the course of human suffering and the progress of medical science are often messy, complex and stranger than can be imagined.”
⎯ Wall Street Journal
“As a huge fan of the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, I was excited to get my hands on this rich biography of the real doctor, Thomas Mütter, a 19th-century surgeon who treated people with misunderstood conditions and amassed a fascinating collection of medical oddities.”
⎯ USA Today
“Dr. Mütter’s Marvels is nonfiction narrative at its best… Aptowicz is refreshingly careful with her language, keeping the narrative speculation to a minimum, painting most of her scenery with the weight of her research. She revels in the details, but largely lets the reader draw their own conclusions. The result is an approachable history of a man and of a time period that does exactly what narrative non-fiction should do: answers the questions the reader never realized they had.”
⎯ The Onion’s A.V. Club
“With a flair for narrative, and having researched extensively, Aptowicz chronicles the ascent of Mütter’s career and his numerous surgical breakthroughs… Aptowicz’s prose works the same way Mütter did — with speed, elegance, and tactile accuracy. In her capable hands, Dr. Mütter’s Marvels is a biography of a scientific innovator that conjures, more vividly than it otherwise might, the atmosphere of the often terrifying and swiftly transforming field of medicine in the 19th century.”
⎯ The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Aptowicz shows Mütter, beloved by his students, evolving from a mischievous, impatient young doctor to an increasingly spiritual man beset by premature illness, and her writing is as full of life as her subject.”
⎯ Publishers Weekly, *starred review*
“Dr. Mütter’s Marvels shares some of the very best qualities of Mary Roach’s iconic Stiff, especially a gross-out curiosity factor and great story-telling. Add a larger-than-life subject and you have
narrative nonfiction magic. Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz tells her story with gusto, taking the reader from the hospitals of Paris to the great medical colleges of Philadelphia in the first half of the 19th century. There is a lot of medical history here, but it is so unbelievable, so over-the-top (yet true!) that readers will be riveted.”
⎯ School Library Journal, *starred review*
“In her deftly crafted narrative, the author provides an absorbing account of the charismatic surgeon’s life and career as well as a vivid look at the medical practices and prejudices of his time. Aptowicz draws nicely on Mütter’s speeches and lectures to reveal the depth of his empathetic philosophies and humanist approach.”
⎯ Kirkus *starred review*
“Aptowicz penned a fast-moving and popular history of the early to mid-¬19th-century American and Parisian medical worlds, making the most of works by and about Mütter’s contemporaries.”
⎯ Library Journal *starred review*, named Best of 2014 in Science
“Dr. Mütter’s Marvels is a fascinating story in its own right, and it’s pried open with the poetic skill of author Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, who spent a decade researching it. The book is ceaselessly interesting but not showy, and Aptowicz expertly paints the scenes with broad brushstrokes and tiny details. It’s a nearly perfect piece of non-fiction.”
⎯ The Onion’s AV Club, named a Best Book of 2014
“Dr. Mütter’s larger-than-life, showman’s personality and incredible medical advancements pair thrillingly with Aptowicz’s enthusiastic writing to deliver many unbelievable facts that readers will need to share with friends.”
⎯ School Library Journal, named a Best Adult Book for Teens 2014
“This is one of those historical science tales that seems too weird to be true. Our modern notion of surgery, complete with anaesthesia and after-care, was invented by a late nineteenth century plastic surgeons, as Aptowicz unravels this engrossing story.”
⎯ io9.com, named a Best Science Book of 2014
“A truly Philadelphian saga deftly told by City of Brotherly Love native Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Dr. Mütter’s Marvels is a comprehensive and engaging biography of 19th-century surgeon, teacher and author Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter. Best known these days as the founding force behind the Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Mütter was essential at shaping the course of medicine in innumerable ways, and Aptowicz navigates his too-short and highly influential life expertly.”
⎯ Asbury Park Press, named a Best Book of 2014
“…Austin-based poet and writer Aptowicz, a woman whose various awards and publications attest to her formidable skill and style when dealing with an impressive diversity of subjects… provide[s] such a thorough and compelling account of Mütter’s life and times, his medical innovations and personal fortitude, his enduring legacy, as is to be found between the well-designed covers of this new book.”
⎯ The Austin Chronicle
“Aptowicz does an excellent job of establishing the context of the times and competing personalities…. As Aptowicz clearly shows, [Mütter's] legacy lives on in many aspects of medicine we now take for granted.”
⎯ Seattle Times
“Aptowicz has a keen eye for the era’s grotesque details (amputation accidents, for one thing) and an obvious sympathy for Mütter’s passion and legacy…”
⎯ The Boston Globe
“The cover, the title and the topic promise the macabre and the grotesque, and this story delivers, making it an ideal read. But there’s a sensitivity to Aptowicz’s handling of this story. She could have gone full-on “American Horror Story: Freak Show,” riding the gory details of 19th century surgery and human disfigurements all the way to the bloody bank. Instead, this is a ruminative, sometimes moving work.”
⎯ Omaha World-Herald
“[Aptowicz’s] passion for the topic is what makes this book ultimately fascinating…The research is meticulous, and the author recounts Mütter’s life with flair. It’s a fantastic yarn….a compelling tale.”
⎯ Austin American Statesmen
“Aptowicz’s engaging biography is a window on the primitive technology and inhumane attitudes [Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter] helped to change in the mid-1800s…. Her tale is strongest when she delves into the development of Philadelphia’s rival medical schools and the jockeying that led Mütter to join an illustrious Jefferson team, the “Famous Faculty of ’41.” A key member was Charles D. Meigs, an obstetrician-gynecologist whose misogyny was surpassed only by his arrogance. Aptowicz uses Meigs as a foil for Mütter, the epitome of empathy and kindness.”
⎯ The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Well known as a poet, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz’s new book Dr. Mütter’s Marvels is compelling and fascinating. The years Aptowicz put into writing it show in her deft mixture of well-researched history, biography, and social commentary.”
⎯ Santa Barbara Independent
“This incredible book tells his amazing story in a gripping narrative that keeps you fascinated… the amazing transformations Dr. Mutter effected may leave you, as they left me, with the unusual sensation of feeling revulsion immediately overpowered by wonder and joy. He was an amazing man, and here his story is beautifully and lovingly retold, a fitting tribute to a long-forgotten hero of his time.”
- San Francisco Book Review
“Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz brings a keen sense of drama, as well as her poet’s imagination and specificity of language, to her tale of Mütter’s life, and offers fascinating information about the practice of medicine at a crucial juncture between magic and science. Her enthusiasm for the man and his work shines on every page of her book, and by the end, she’s entertainingly provided ample evidence for her thesis that Mütter was a major medical innovator.”
⎯ Ploughshares
“Aptowicz has written a breezy, yet substantial biography of Thomas Dent Mutter, the Philadelphia plastic surgeon who introduced or promoted many medical innovations.”
⎯ The New York Public Library
“[a] beautifully detailed biography … Mütter started out as a foppish medical student in Paris, but ended a hero tending to the injured poor… What emerges here is a dual portrait of the driven doctor and a medical field transformed by scientific, if sometimes eccentric, pioneers.”
⎯ Nature Magazine
“Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz paints a moving portrait of a surgeon who had ample doses of empathy…”
⎯ BookBrowse
“Mütter’s Marvels is both an insightful portrait of a pioneering surgeon and a reminder of how far medicine has come.”
⎯ BookPage
“Wonderfully eerie and incredibly informative, this biography is a must-read.”
⎯ Hello Giggles
“A mesmerizing biography….”
⎯ BookReporter
“[Dr. Mütter’s Marvels] is an absorbing look at a thoroughly engaging man, a terrifying state of medicine, and how, despite his short life, Mütter left a legacy which benefits us all.”
⎯ Historical Novel Society Review
“In Dr. Mütter’s Marvels, Aptowicz transplants the reader ringside into the first American operating theaters… The first biography about Mütter’s life, researched and penned by author/poet Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, vividly reconstructs the wild world of medical science circa 1820-1860, and how important Mütter was to some of its advances…”
⎯ Roadside America
“Aptowicz pens a fascinating and muscular biography of Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter, splendidly re-creating the doctor’s medical advancements, the age in which he worked, and the conditions and practices he sought to change.”
⎯ Wyatt’s World, Library Journal
“Aptowicz approaches her subject with passion and finesse, so that the book to reads more like fiction than nonfiction, ensuring that it will appeal to a wide audience.”
⎯ Publishers Weekly, Galley Talk
“She has finely crafted a biography that not only fascinates, but educates. I could NOT put this book down.”
⎯ Wandering Educators
“So you say you love a good drama? Dr. Mütter’s Marvels gives you plenty of that, plus intrigue, history, bickering, backbiting, and biography.”
⎯ Peninsula Clarion
“As a general class of people, we surgeons are a handful. Impatient, abrupt, and inescapably prone to profanity, we function in an independent solar system where the world orbits around our own self-centered axis. We learn through Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz’s Dr. Mutter’s Marvels, however, of a surgeon who was cut from a different cloth in this panoramic and insightful window into nineteenth century medicine.”
⎯ Writers’ League of Texas
“Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz’s “true tale of intrigue and innovation at the dawn of modern medicine” is such a captivating, gripping, and intensely interesting historical tale that even the reader who has mere casual interest in the subject will find themselves devouring Aptowicz’s text in a matter of days, if not hours.”
⎯ Fanboy Comics
“[T]his was an incredibly fascinating read about the development of innovative ideas that have helped make modern medicine what it is today.”
⎯ Bookishly Speaking