This book examines a topic that has received surprisingly scant attention, despite the roughly 400,000 sudden deaths per year in the United States. How is it that a whole industry has grown up around cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) when it seems to be so rarely successful? In exploring the answer, Stefan Timmermans meets the difficult challenge of articulating a common ground of interest for emergency medical staff, basic researchers, ethicists, sociologists, anthropologists, policy wonks, and that large and important constituency lumped under the inadequate rubric "lay readers." - Foreword.