UT Know :: 100,000 Hearts

100,000 Hearts
By Denton A. Cooley, M.D.
Buy It Now

A memoir with heart
By Briscoe Center for American History

Pioneering surgeon Dr. Denton Cooley performed his first human heart transplant in 1968 and astounded the world in 1969 when he was the first surgeon to successfully implant a totally artificial heart in a human being.

In his new memoir, “100,000 Hearts,” Cooley (BA, 1941) shares his life story and his transformation from a shy boy to one of the world’s most important surgeons. The photographs in the slideshow above appear in his memoir.

In “100,000 Hearts,” Cooley recounts his childhood in Houston and his experiences as a basketball scholarship recipient at The University of Texas of Austin. After medical school at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and at Johns Hopkins, Cooley served in the Army Medical Corps. While at Johns Hopkins, Cooley assisted in a groundbreaking operation to correct an infant’s congenital heart defect, which inspired him to specialize in heart surgery. Over the course of his career, Cooley and his associates have performed more than 100,000 open heart operations and have been forerunners in implementing new surgical procedures.

Of all his achievements, however, Cooley is most proud of the Texas Heart Institute, which he founded in 1962, in Houston, with a mission to use education, research and improved patient care to decrease the devastating effects of cardiovascular disease.

Cooley notes the importance of his time at the university in his memoir: “The four years that I spent at UT gave me the knowledge and skills I would need for both medical school and life. Because of what my alma mater gave me, I have always tried to support it in every possible way.”

It’s particularly fitting that this book has strong ties to the university. The memoir is published by the university’s Briscoe Center for American History and is distributed by the University of Texas Press. Don Carleton, the Briscoe Center’s executive director, worked closely with Dr. Cooley in shaping the contents of the memoir.

As Tom Brokaw said, “Dr. Cooley has always played at the top of his game, whether as a basketball star at the University of Texas or as a world-class heart surgeon. How he accomplished all that is a must read.”

Read more, and see the slideshow at utexas.edu »

Houston Chronicle :: The Trials of Eroy Brown

Bookish picks: 2011 Texas Titles
Reviewed by Maggie Galehouse

We are encouraged to buy local and regional in grocery stores and farmers’ markets.

Why not buy books with the same philosophy — to support Texas authors, stories and presses?

All the 2011 books listed below have a strong Texas connection.

Happy reading!

100,000 Hearts
By Denton A. Cooley, M.D.
Buy It Now

100,000 Hearts: A Surgeon’s Memoir, by Denton Cooley, M.D. (UT Press) Cooley, who founded the Texas Heart Institute in 1962, grew up in Houston and attended the University of Texas. While in medical school at Johns Hopkins, Cooley assisted in an operation to help correct a congenital heart defect in an infant. This led him to specialize in heart surgery.

Crazy from the Heat

By James H. Evans

Buy It Now

Crazy From the Heat: A Chronicle of Twenty Years in the Big Bend by James H. Evans. (University of Texas Press). This photography book offers landscapes and panoramas — in both black and white, and color — of the biggest state park in Texas. People, plants, animals, objects, even an “exploded view” of ‘Shirley’s Fried Pie’ make this collection personal and universal.

The Trials of Elroy Brown

by Michael Berryhill

Buy It Now

The Trials of Eroy Brown, by Michael Berryhill. (UT Press) In 1981, a black inmate at the Ellis prison farm near Huntsville killed two white Texas prison officials. The man who admitted to killing them, a burglar and robber named Eroy Brown, surrendered, claiming self-defense. The Trials of Eroy Brown focuses on Brown’s defense and is based on trial documents, exhibits, and journalistic accounts of Brown’s three trials, which ended in his acquittal.




See the entire list at chron.com »

The Houston Chronicle :: 100,000 Hearts

100,000 Hearts
By Denton A. Cooley, M.D.
Buy It Now

Cooley writes about DeBakey feud, reconciliation
By Todd Ackerman
Photo: Melissa Phillip

Dr. Denton Cooley implanted the world's first artificial heart in a patient dying on the operating table after Dr. Michael DeBakey rebuffed the inventor's research project at Baylor College of Medicine, Cooley writes in a new memoir.

In his first in-depth discussion of medicine's most famous feud, the famed cardiovascular surgeon writes that a frustrated Dr. Domingo Liotta brought him the device at the Texas Heart Institute and they redesigned it for use as an emergency bridge to transplantation - an emergency that presented itself a few months later, in 1969, when surgery to remove a large part of patient Haskell Karp's diseased heart failed.

"I'd reached a critical point in the procedure," Cooley writes in 100,000 Hearts: A Surgeon's Memoir (University of Texas Press). "Was I going to let Mr. Karp die on the operating table or try to save his life by whatever means? I decided to proceed with implanting the total artificial heart."

Cooley's account conflicts with the conventional view that he stole the device from DeBakey's Baylor laboratory in a race to be the first to implant an artificial heart.

The subsequent feud, immortalized in an iconic 1970 Life magazine cover story, endured for nearly 40 years before the two giants publicly reconciled in 2007, less than two years before DeBakey died at 99. In the book, Cooley gives the backstory about the change of heart.

Read the full article at chron.com »