作者简介作者约翰·托格诺里尼是一名历史教师，曾获悉尼科技大学传播学的一级荣誉学位，并有西悉尼大学的中等教育文凭。在成为历史教师之前，他曾从事过诸多蓝领的工作。他从1987年起开始从事社区广播工作，曾为澳大利亚国家广播电台（ABC RN）制作了四部广播纪录片，并出品了三部电影。他的第一本著作《山城谋杀案》出版于2010年，一战系列历史小说《兄弟》主要讲述1916年至1918年间发生在法国和比利时西部前线的故事。除去作家的身份，他还是一名音乐家和诗人。内容简介"心脏病棘手的地方是，它的首发症状很难对付，因为那往往就是猝死。"——迈克尔·菲尔普斯医生。 按照这句话，我早该死翘翘了。但是多亏现代医学，虽然百分之百得了心脏病，可还活得好好的。用一句绿茵场上的术语来说，我获得了人生加时。 2011年10月28日，我54岁，做了六个半小时的心脏手术，把我原来的瓣膜换成人工的，还做了心脏搭桥。要不是这次手术，10个月后我就会死于冠状动脉瘤和心脏衰竭。我写这本书的目的，是鼓励人们，尤其是男人，都去检查一下自己的心脏。很多人根本不知道自己有心脏病，就这么不明不白地丢了性命。男人尤其不愿意重视健康问题，在这点上不如女人。 另外，这本书里还提到了音乐，描述了旋律神奇的疗效。这不仅是我自己的"心路历程"的记录，也是我和音乐的故事的记录。在过去的许多年中，我有幸认识了一些伟大的音乐家，其中有几个人在我的生活中扮演了举足轻重的角色。 本书不仅记叙了我的个人经历，更代表了我在帮助降低心脏病死亡率方面的努力。"The trouble with heart disease is that the first symptom is often hard to deal with − sudden death."Dr Michael Phelps.I should be brown bread. Translating that good Cockney rhyming slang, which has become part of the Australian vernacular, I should be dead. I say this because of my jam tart, my heart. Thanks to modern medical science I'm still here, and it's been proved beyond all reasonable doubt that I have one, a heart that is. To use the football term, I'm in extra time. But instead of a few minutes, I'm talking about maybe three decades. I'm 54 years old.On October 28, 2011, I had a six-and-a-half hour heart operation. It was actually two operations, one to replace my aortic valve with a mechanical valve and one to graph my aortic artery (the main trunk from the heart that connects all the arteries). If I did not have these jobs done I would have been a dead man walking, the victim of a coronary aneurysm and certain heart failure ten months later.In writing this account I want to encourage people, especially men, to get their hearts checked out. There are many men who are not aware that they have a heart condition, let alone one that can kill them. There is a general reluctance among men to take our health issues seriously, not only in relation to the heart, but also other health issues that have a high fatality count, such as prostate cancer. As prostate cancer survivor and Hawthorn football legend Don Scott pointed out, men don't take the same serious attitude to our health problems that women generally do.There's an additional part of my story, explaining the fantastic healing power of music. This isn't just a recounting of my journey of the heart, but also the story of my relationship with music. That relationship goes back more than twenty five years, alongside my involvement in radio. I've been fortunate enough to meet some great musicians over the years and a few have played a big role in my life.This isn't just a descriptive account of my experience with heart disease, it's also a serious attempt to help reduce the large death toll caused by it.John TognoliniAbout the photo on the front coverRussell Crowe, Amanda Dole and myself outside Radio Redfern on May Day 1989. Russell had just performed a few songs on my show, Radio Solidarity. In 1988, Radio Skid Row was evicted from our studios in the basement floor of Sydney University's Wenthworth Building. We were taken in for eighteen months by the Aborigines/Kooris at Radio Redfern, who now broadcast across Sydney through Koori Radio, until we built and opened the Radio Skid Row studios in Marrickville in 1990. Photo by Frances Kelly.