Repairing or Perfecting the World: Admirable Actions of Ordinary People and Unexpected Acts of Admirable People

Repairing or Perfecting the World is about people, obscure, famous, or somewhere in between. Some were ordinary people doing extraordinary things, while others were well-known people doing unexpected beneficent acts. The actions vary from those of patients or doctors and from warriors to scientists. The book is presented as stories called "carols" that describe these people and their actions. Illustrated in these carols is the importance of individual agency; people can make a difference, both collectively and individually; creed must be accompanied by deed; each individual's actions are important. All such actions must be consistent with caring for our fellow man.

The author, Dr. Samuel Hellman, states that "The creed and deeds of medical researchers are evolving; hopefully like the arc cited by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., they will bend toward the essential rights and dignity of each individual." The carols presented in Repairing or Perfecting the World demonstrate similar curves of human actions in many spheres of human endeavor. The book is presented with three major themes: Hegemony and War; Doctoring and Science; and Feminism and Me. All are concerned with individuals improving the human condition.

Samuel Hellman is the A. N. Pritzker Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of The University of Chicago. His major career positions included 15 years as a Professor of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School, where he was the first chairperson of that newly-formed department. He left to become the Physician-in-Chief of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, following which he became the Dean of the Pritzker School of Medicine at The University of Chicago and concomitantly the Dean of the Biological Sciences Division of the university. After his tenure as Dean, he remained as a senior member of the medical school faculty.

He has co-edited with Vincent DeVita and Steven Rosenberg the leading textbook of oncology, Cancer: Principles and Practice of Oncology, through its first seven editions. It was by far the most successful of its kind, a number of the English editions sold in excess of 40,000 copies, and some editions were also translated into Spanish, Chinese, or Italian. With DeVita and Rosenberg, he edited four editions of the textbook, AIDS, and with others he co-edited five sequential textbooks concerning breast cancer. He was an early proponent and remains an advocate of breast-preserving treatment as the preferred treatment of small breast cancers. He has written two books intended for the general public as well as for a medical audience: Learning While Caring in 2017 and Repairing and Perfecting the World in 2021.
Being a physician-scientist and teacher gives him a participant's window on the evolution of academic medicine. Being a radiation oncologist gives him a window on the benefits and challenges of the atomic age. Being a breast cancer doctor gives him a window into the patient's role in her care. Being a man in the second half of the twentieth century and first half of the twenty-first century with a sister and a wife, and being the father of a law professor daughter and the grandfather of 3 granddaughters, makes gender equality a central concern to him.