Face to Face: True stories of life, death and transformation from my career as a facial surgeon

''Face to Face is not just a brilliant introduction to one of the most exacting areas of modern medicine, it''s a humbling glimpse of humans at their best.'' Sunday Times

So much of our identity and sense of self is vested in the face we see in the bathroom mirror every morning. Now imagine that face so ravaged by cancer, an accident, a gun shot wound or a car crash that it is barely recognizable. Think how it might feel if, after surgery, the person you remember, but had given up all hope of seeing again, is looking back at you from the mirror once more.

Over the years, maxillofacial surgeon Jim McCaul has helped countless people make this journey. His extraordinary book follows the stories of some of the patients he has saved from terrible illness and life-changing injuries – and some he wasn’t able to help. We follow the epic and complex surgical procedures his job requires him to perform daily, where the margin for error is to all intents and purposes zero.

Face to Face is a journey through the most high-tech and complex of microsurgical procedures as well as the facial reconstruction techniques pioneered during the First World War. But at its heart are the human stories of the patients for whom treatment is often quite literally a matter of life and death.

''Fascinating and life-affirming ... Jim McCaul confides in us the joys and the agony of facial surgery.'' Dr Richard Shepherd, bestselling author of Unnatural Causes