The starting point of Ann Oakley's fascinating new book is the fracture of her right arm in the grounds of a hotel in the US. What begins as an accident becomes a journey into some critical themes of modern Western culture. Fracture mixes personal experience the author's and other people's with facts derived from other literatures, including the history of medicine, neurology, the sociology of health and illness, philosophy, and legal discourses on the right to life, and people as victims of a greedy litigation system.