Excerpt from The Greater Journey by David McCullough, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

For all that was so morbidly unpleasant about work at the dissecting tables - the stench, the smoke - it was far better, every student came to appreciate, that they practice on the dead than on the living. If the work was laborious, they had chosen a laborious profession. For any of the Americans to have given up and gone home would have been easy enough, but there is no evidence any of them did.

From The Greater Journey by David McCullough. Copyright © 2011 by David McCullough. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc, NY.