The headlines blare that President Obama will “restructure the financial services industry” and “fix the health care crisis.“ A 31-yearold with no experience in the business world, but a lot of experience in politics, has been put in charge of dismantling General Motors. Members of Congress lecture car manufacturers and mortgage lenders on how to do their jobs. Politicians keep taking on more and more responsibility for the U.S. economy, as each industry appears to be getting its own “czar.“ Unfortunately, more czars will not produce better cars, or health care, or mortgages, or much of anything else.

In 1822, William Beaumont, a doctor stationed at Fort Mackinac, Mich., rushed to aid a man who had been accidentally shot in the abdomen. The wound was horrendous. “Not many people would be expected to survive an injury of this magnitude,“ writes F. González-Crussi in “Carrying the Heart: Exploring the Worlds Within Us,“ a fascinating look at our attempts to understand the human body’s inner workings.