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Michael J. Collins’ Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs: The Making of a Surgeonis a memoir of the surgeon’s journey from breaking old concrete (and other very blue collar jobs) to pre-med and residency. The primary focus is on Collins’ family and personal life with relatively little of his actual medical experiences. For readers like me interested in the nuts and bolts of the acquisition of surgical expertise this tome doesn’t compare to the author’s earlier Hot Lights, Cold Steel (not to mention William Nolen’s 1970 classic The Making of a Surgeon). Even so it’s a delightfully told tale with great vignettes of Irish Catholic life in Chicago.