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Collected in this volume:
- "Life-Line"
- "Successful Operation"
- "Blowups Happen"
- "Solution Unsatisfactory"
- "The Last Days of the United States"
- "How to Be a Survivor"
- "Pie from the Sky"
- "Free Men"
- "No Bands Playing, No Flags Flying--"
- "A Bathroom of Her Own"
- "On the Slopes of Vesuvius"
- "Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon"
- "Pandora's Box"
- "Where To?"
- "Cliff and the Calories"
- "Ray Guns and Rocket Ships"
- "The Third Millenium Opens"
- "Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry?"
- "Inside Intourist"
- "Searchlight"
- "The Pragmatics of Patriotism"
- "Paul Dirac, Antimatter and You"
- "Larger than Life"
- "Spinoff"
- "The Happy Days Ahead"
Excerpts
Heinlein talks about his carotid bypass surgery:
"My left internal carotid is still blocked; the stoppage is too high up for surgery. So they sent me to Dr. Chater at Franklin Hospital, who moved my left superficial temporal artery to feed the left side of my brain. This operation is pictured on pages 62 and 63 of the April 1978 Scientific American, so I will omit grisly details; if surgery interests you, you can look them up there.
"The procedure is this: Scalp the patient from the left eyebrow, going high and curving down to a spot behind the left ear back of the mastoid. Cut away from the scalp the temporal artery. Saw a circular hole in the skull above the ear. Go inside the brain into the Sylvian fissure, find its main artery, join the two arteries, end to side. The left anterior lobe of my brain is now served by the left external carotid via this round-about bypass. Dr, Chater did the hookup under a microscope with sutures so fine the naked eye can't see them.
"Check by Doppler ultrasound to make sure the bypass works, then close the hole in the skull with a plate that has a groove in it for the moved artery. Sew back the scalp--go to lunch. The surgeon has been operating for four hours; he's hungry. (The patient is not.)
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