Playing God: The Evolution of a Modern Surgeon

What does it mean to be a doctor?

“I am a doctor.”

Every year, thousands of medical school graduates utter these four simple words. But as you will see in Playing God, earning an M.D. is just the first step to becoming a real physician.

In this page-turning, thrilling, and moving memoir, Dr. Anthony Youn reveals that the true metamorphosis from student to doctor occurs not in medical school but in the formative years of residency training and early practice. It is only through actually saving and losing patients, taking on the medical establishment, wrestling with financial and emotional survival, and fighting for patients’ lives that a young doctor becomes a mature and competent physician.

Dr. Youn takes you from the operating rooms of a university surgery residency program to the gleaming offices of top Beverly Hills plastic surgeons to opening the doors of his empty clinic as a new doctor with no money, no patients, and mountains of debt. Playing God leaves you with an unexpected answer to that profound question: “What does it mean to be a doctor?” 

In Playing God, you will take a journey through the world of surgery, hospitals, and the practice of medicine unlike any that you have traveled before.

Anthony Youn, M.D. is known as America's Holistic Plastic Surgeon and one of the country's most recognized plastic surgeons. He is the host of a popular podcast, The Holistic Plastic Surgery Show. Dr. Youn is also the author of In Stitches, his critically-acclaimed and award-winning memoir of becoming a doctor (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, 2011), and The Age Fix: A Leading Plastic Surgeon Reveals How To Really Look Ten Years Younger (Grand Central Life & Style/Hachette, 2016).  The latter was adapted into a successful public television special which has been viewed by millions.  Dr. Youn is also a regular expert on The Rachael Ray Show, The Dr. Oz Show, The Doctors, and many more national television programs. 

Named a "Top Plastic Surgeon" by U.S. News and World Report, Town & Country, and Harper's Bazaar, Dr. Youn is a member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine.

Alan Eisenstock is the author of seventeen books, most recently Love Thy Neighbor: A Muslim Doctor's Struggle for Home in Rural America (Convergent Books), written with Dr. Ayaz Virji. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.