“A Deeply Personal, Inspiring Story”: A Review of Fighting for Air by Ola Didrik Saugstad
(Cardiff, CA: Waterside Productions, 2022). ISBN: 978-1-958848-03-6 When I first received this memoir, I wondered at its subject matter. Dr. Saugstad led the fight for decades to replace pure oxygen with air for newborns in need of resuscitation. In all honesty, I was unaware that there ever was such a fight. I certainly was unsure if this was a medical history piece from which my lack of sufficient background and context would keep me at a distance. Would it be accessible to me at all? Having read this heartfelt book with the kind of page-turning interest one would expect from a tale of high adventure, I can state with full assurance that Dr. Saugstad’s story is not only far broader than the fight for which he is internationally known; it’s one of the most inspiring and human memoirs I’ve read in quite some time. This humble Norwegian doctor—the grandson of the president of the University of Oslo during World War II who spent time in a concentration camp—took part i...