Five Days at Memorial
Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
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Five Days at Memorial
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Narrated by:
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Kirsten Potter
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By:
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Sheri Fink
About this listen
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The award-winning book that inspired an Apple Original series from Apple TV+ • A landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina—and the suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice—from a Pulitzer Prize–winning physician and reporter
“An amazing tale, as inexorable as a Greek tragedy and as gripping as a whodunit.”—Dallas Morning News
After Hurricane Katrina struck and power failed, amid rising floodwaters and heat, exhausted staff at Memorial Medical Center designated certain patients last for rescue. Months later, a doctor and two nurses were arrested and accused of injecting some of those patients with life-ending drugs.
Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting by Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink, unspools the mystery, bringing us inside a hospital fighting for its life and into the most charged questions in health care: which patients should be prioritized, and can health care professionals ever be excused for hastening death?
Transforming our understanding of human nature in crisis, Five Days at Memorial exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals how ill-prepared we are for large-scale disasters—and how we can do better.
ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, Entertainment Weekly, Christian Science Monitor, Kansas City Star
WINNER: National Book Critics Circle Award, J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Ridenhour Book Prize, American Medical Writers Association Medical Book Award, National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Award
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Editorial reviews
Editors Select, September 2013 - I’m more of a fiction reader and listener, but on the occasions when I turn to nonfiction it’s to better understand a compelling story. The best narrative nonfiction – like Unbroken and Devil in the White City – remains with you long after the last chapter has ended, and so is the case with my September pick, which reveals the chaotic details, devastating conditions, and overwhelming emotions that emerged during the five days that hundreds of patients, employees, family members, and pets spent stranded in New Orleans’ Memorial Hospital during Hurricane Katrina. It’s hard to listen to the events of those days – but almost as impossible to put the book down as author Sheri Fink, who previously won the Pulitzer Prize for her reporting, raises important questions about end-of-life care and how to be better prepared for major disasters. Frightening, fascinating, and highly recommended. Diana D., Audible Editor
Critic reviews
2014, Carnegie Medal, Short-listed
2013, Los Angeles Times Book Prizes—Current Interest—Winner
2014, National Book Critics Circle Awards, Winner
2015, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, Winner
2014, Ron Ridenhour Book Award, Winner
“The journalist and doctor Sheri Fink published a meticulous investigation of these deaths in the New York Times Magazine and on the Web site of ProPublica, in 2009. Her work won a Pulitzer Prize. And now comes the book. In Five Days at Memorial, the contours of the story remain the same, yet Fink imbues them with far more narrative richness, making the doctors seem both more sympathetic and more culpable. Fink also expands on the ethical conundrums, which have festered over time and seem to gain fresh urgency.” (The New Yorker)
"“That so many people, starkly divided over the question of whether crimes had been committed, come off as decent and appealing makes this book an absorbing read. Dr. Fink brings a shimmering intelligence to its many narrative cul-de-sacs, which consider medical, legal and ethical issues. . . . By reporting the depth of those gruesome hours in Memorial before the helicopters came, and giving weight to medical ethics as grounded in the law, Sheri Fink has written an unforgettable story. Five Days at Memorial is social reporting of the first rank.” (Jason Berry, The New York Times)
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 987
David Oshinsky, whose last book, Polio: An American Story, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating
- By Anonymous User on 12-14-16
By: David Oshinsky
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Paradise Falls
- The True Story of an Environmental Catastrophe
- By: Keith O'Brien
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 91
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 74
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Story5 out of 5 stars 74
Lois Gibbs, Luella Kenny, and other mothers loved their neighborhood on the east side of Niagara Falls. It had an elementary school, a playground, and rows of affordable homes. In the spring of 1977, pungent odors began to seep into these little houses, and it didn’t take long for worried mothers to identify the curious scent. It was the sickly-sweet smell of chemicals.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Incredible work of everyday people
- By Anonymous User on 11-20-24
By: Keith O'Brien
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The Desperate Hours
- One Hospital's Fight to Save a City on the Pandemic's Front Lines
- By: Marie Brenner
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
In the spring of 2020, COVID-19 arrived in New York City. Before long, America’s largest metropolis was at war against a virus that mercilessly swept through its five boroughs. In The Desperate Hours, award-winning journalist Marie Brenner, having been granted unprecedented 18-month access to the entire New York-Presbyterian hospital system, tells the story of the doctors, nurses, residents, researchers, and suppliers who tried to save lives across Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn and the northern periphery of the city.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Way too much politics
- By Anonymous User on 07-18-22
By: Marie Brenner
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Perfect Poison
- A Female Serial Killer's Deadly Medicine
- By: M. William Phelps
- Narrated by: J. Charles
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 212
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 141
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 141
In Northampton, Massachusetts, at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Kristen Gilbert was known as a hardworking, dedicated nurse - so why were her patients dying? So many emergencies and sudden deaths occurred while Kristen made her rounds on Ward C that her colleagues jokingly called her the "Angel of Death".
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4 out of 5 stars
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Men are naive
- By Anonymous User on 09-15-12
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Inferno
- A Doctor's Ebola Story
- By: Steven Hatch MD
- Narrated by: Steven Hatch MD
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
Dr. Steven Hatch first came to Liberia in November 2013 to work at a hospital in Monrovia. Six months later, several of the physicians Dr. Hatch had mentored and served with were dead or barely clinging to life, and Ebola had become a world health emergency. Hundreds of victims perished each week; whole families were destroyed in a matter of days; so many died so quickly that the culturally taboo practice of cremation had to be instituted to dispose of the bodies.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Good story, spoiled by politics.
- By Anonymous User on 07-22-17
By: Steven Hatch MD
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How to Survive a Plague
- The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS
- By: David France
- Narrated by: Rory O'Malley
- Length: 24 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 330
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 308
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 307
A riveting, powerful telling of the story of the grassroots movement of activists, many of them in a life-or-death struggle, who seized upon scientific research to help develop the drugs that turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable disease. Ignored by public officials, religious leaders, and the nation at large, and confronted with shame and hatred, this small group of men and women chose to fight for their right to live by educating themselves and demanding to become full partners in the race for effective treatments.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Read This Book!
- By Anonymous User on 05-30-17
By: David France
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Bellevue
- Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital
- By: David Oshinsky
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,121
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 992
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 987
David Oshinsky, whose last book, Polio: An American Story, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Fascinating
- By Anonymous User on 12-14-16
By: David Oshinsky
-
Paradise Falls
- The True Story of an Environmental Catastrophe
- By: Keith O'Brien
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 91
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 74
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 74
Lois Gibbs, Luella Kenny, and other mothers loved their neighborhood on the east side of Niagara Falls. It had an elementary school, a playground, and rows of affordable homes. In the spring of 1977, pungent odors began to seep into these little houses, and it didn’t take long for worried mothers to identify the curious scent. It was the sickly-sweet smell of chemicals.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Incredible work of everyday people
- By Anonymous User on 11-20-24
By: Keith O'Brien
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The Good Death
- An Exploration of Dying in America
- By: Ann Neumann
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 174
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 153
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 152
Following the death of her father, journalist and hospice volunteer Ann Neumann sets out to examine what it means to die well in the United States. When Ann Neumann's father was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, she left her job and moved back to her hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She became his full-time caregiver - cooking, cleaning, and administering medications. When her father died, she was undone by the experience, by grief and the visceral quality of dying.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Ugh, so boring
- By Anonymous User on 05-13-19
By: Ann Neumann
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Last Dance, Last Chance
- And Other True Cases (Ann Rule's Crime Files, Book 8)
- By: Ann Rule
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 280
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 236
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 229
Ann Rule presents her 8th collection of crime stories drawn from her private files - and featuring the riveting case of a fraudulent doctor whose lifelong deceptions had deadly consequences. Dr. Anthony Pignataro was a cosmetic surgeon and a famed medical researcher whose flashy red Lamborghini and flamboyant lifestyle in western New York State suggested a highly successful career. But no one was safe if they got in his way. With scalpel, drugs, and arsenic, he betrayed every oath a physician makes - until his own schemes backfired.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Enjoyed the stories
- By Anonymous User on 05-13-14
By: Ann Rule
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Bad City
- Peril and Power in the City of Angels
- By: Paul Pringle
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 399
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 355
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 356
On a cool, overcast afternoon in April 2016, a salacious tip arrived at the L.A. Times that reporter Paul Pringle thought should have taken, at most, a few weeks to check out: a drug overdose at a fancy hotel involving one of the University of Southern California’s shiniest stars—Dr. Carmen Puliafito, the head of the prestigious medical school. Pringle, who’d long done battle with USC and its almost impenetrable culture of silence, knew reporting the story wouldn’t be a walk in the park. USC is the largest private employer in the city of L.A., and it casts a long shadow.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wow.
- By Anonymous User on 07-22-22
By: Paul Pringle
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The Stranger She Loved
- A Mormon Doctor, His Beautiful Wife, and an Almost Perfect Murder
- By: Shanna Hogan
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 426
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 384
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 384
In 2007, Dr. Martin MacNeill - a doctor, lawyer, and Mormon bishop - discovered his wife of 30 years dead in the bathtub of their Pleasant Grove, Utah, home, her face bearing the scars of a facelift he had persuaded her to undergo just a week prior. At first the death of 50-year-old Michele MacNeill, a former beauty queen and mother of eight, appeared natural. But days after the funeral, when Dr. MacNeill moved his much younger mistress into the family home, his children grew suspicious.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The story of a true psychopath
- By Anonymous User on 11-27-15
By: Shanna Hogan
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Doctored
- The Disillusionment of an American Physician
- By: Sandeep Jauhar
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 80
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4 out of 5 stars 68
Hoping for the stability he needs to start a family, Sandeep Jauhar, an attending cardiologist, accepts a position at a massive teaching hospital on the outskirts of Queens. With a decade's worth of elite medical training behind him, he is eager to settle down and reap the rewards of countless sleepless nights. Instead, he is confronted with sobering truths. Doctors' morale is low and getting lower.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Frank, inside perspective on the follies of unintended consequences in medical reform
- By JW on 02-25-18
By: Sandeep Jauhar
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Beating Back the Devil
- By: Maryn McKenna
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 197
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 125
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 129
The universal instinct is to run from an outbreak of disease. These doctors run toward it. They always keep a bag packed. They seldom have more than 24 hours before they are dispatched. They are told only their country of destination and the epidemic they will tackle when they get there.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting Stuff - Only criticism is pacing
- By Anonymous User on 07-23-05
By: Maryn McKenna
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Rawhide Down
- The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan
- By: Del Quentin Wilber
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 298
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 221
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 217
On March 30, 1981, President Reagan walked out of a hotel in Washington, D.C. and was shot by a would-be assassin. For years, few people knew the truth about how close the president came to dying, and no one has ever written a detailed narrative of that harrowing day. Now, drawing on exclusive new interviews, Del Quentin Wilber tells the electrifying story of a moment when the nation teetered on the brink of chaos.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Informative and Entertaining
- By Anonymous User on 03-31-11
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King of Hearts
- The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery
- By: G. Wayne Miller
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 284
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 172
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 169
G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved every minute
- By Anonymous User on 02-05-08
By: G. Wayne Miller
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Changing the Way We Die
- Compassionate End-of-Life Care and the Hospice Movement
- By: Sheila Himmel, Fran Smith
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 62
There’s a quiet revolution happening in the way we die. More than 1.5 million Americans a year die in hospice care - nearly 44 percent of all deaths - and a vast industry has sprung up to meet the growing demand. Once viewed as a New Age indulgence, hospice is now a $14 billion business and one of the most successful segments in health care. Changing the Way We Die, by award-winning journalists Fran Smith and Sheila Himmel, is the first book to take a broad, penetrating look at the hospice landscape.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Sadly, not very engaging.
- By Anonymous User on 06-16-18
By: Sheila Himmel, and others
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JFK Has Been Shot
- A Parkland Hospital Surgeon Speaks Out
- By: Charles A. Crenshaw, Jens Hansen, J. Gary Shaw
- Narrated by: James C. Lewis
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 114
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 100
On November 22, 1963, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, an accomplished surgeon, tried to save John F. Kennedy's life - and then days later, the life of the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. His gripping, firsthand account contradicts the Warren Commission and years of public misperception, and illuminates a chapter in American history long cloaked in conspiracy. Writing with eye-opening immediacy, Dr. Crenshaw takes listeners into the emergency room to share the critical events at Parkland Hospital as he lived them.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Too much inflammatory language
- By Anonymous User on 02-20-14
By: Charles A. Crenshaw, and others
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Lie After Lie
- The True Story of a Master of Deception, Betrayal, and Murder
- By: Lara Bricker
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4 out of 5 stars 43
A seemingly perfect world held an even more unlikely killer... Julie Keown had a great job, financial security, and a perfect husband who was attending Harvard Business School. But after Julie suddenly died, and doctors discovered she’d been poisoned with the main ingredient in antifreeze, her parents began to suspect that her husband, James, was not so perfect. This blow-by-blow account shows how investigators and state police unraveled James Keown’s chilling web of deceit.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Boring writing and lack of any narrative arc
- By Anonymous User on 11-21-18
By: Lara Bricker
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Splendid Solution
- Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio
- By: Jeffrey Kluger
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 248
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 151
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 153
Salk became a cultural hero and icon for a whole generation. Now, at the fiftieth anniversary of the first national vaccination program, and as humanity is tantalizingly close to eradicating polio worldwide, comes this unforgettable chronicle. Salk's work was an unparalleled achievement, and it makes for a magnificent listen.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent book
- By Anonymous User on 08-10-06
By: Jeffrey Kluger
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Charity
- The Heroic and Heartbreaking Story of Charity Hospital in Hurricane Katrina
- By: Jim Carrier
- Narrated by: Jim Carrier
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 22
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 20
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3 out of 5 stars
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