Life on the Line

Young Doctors Come of Age in a Pandemic

By: Emma Goldberg

Narrated by: Sandy Rustin

The gripping account of six young doctors enlisted to fight COVID-19, an engrossing, eye-opening book in the tradition of both Sheri Fink’s Five Days at Memorial and Scott Turow’s One L.

In March 2020, soon-to-graduate medical students in New York City were nervously awaiting “match day” when they would learn where they would begin their residencies. Only a week later, these young physicians learned that they would be sent to the front lines of the desperate battle to save lives as the coronavirus plunged the city into crisis.

Taking the Hippocratic Oath via Zoom, these new doctors were sent into iconic New York hospitals including Bellevue and Montefiore, the epicenters of the epicenter. In this powerful book, New York Times journalist Emma Goldberg offers an up-close portrait of six bright yet inexperienced health professionals, each of whom defies a stereotype about who gets to don a doctor’s white coat. Goldberg illuminates how the pandemic redefines what it means for them to undergo this trial by fire as caregivers, colleagues, classmates, friends, romantic partners, and concerned family members.

Woven together from in-depth interviews with the doctors, their notes, and Goldberg’s own extensive reporting, this pause-resisting narrative is an unforgettable depiction of a crisis unfolding in real time and a timeless and unique chronicle of the rite of passage of young doctors.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Emma Goldberg (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers

Interesting

Very interesting story. Enjoyed following each person and found the history included to be interesting as well.

Front-Line Non-Fiction

As a retired RN I cannot impress the importance of understanding the various concepts covered in this book so people can start to formalize the importance for why year 2021 medical care is delivered as it is and the need to have written DNR/DNI orders completed.

Should be titled “Diatribe about gender and race”

Should be titled, “Diatribe about gender and race”

The expectation of a book about doctors during covid is that there are a lot of stories and info about covid, yet 1/3 or 1/2 of the book is a lecture about race and gender.
The author, who is not a doctor or in the medical field, goes on and on that one of the reasons that people are so sick is because of white control. She says the medical community is racist and often makes choices to deliberately hurt people of color.
She says the reason that people are so sick has nothing to do with personal responsibility, but because of normalized systemic racism in the medical industry and that racism is purposeful and systemic.
Early in the book she says that PTSD and trauma that gay men experience in NYC are the same as families of holocaust survivors due to the number of friends they lost in the AIDS epidemic. And don’t worry, she got “police brutality” in there as well.
She talked about the lack of ventilators early on in the pandemic and blamed it on corporations, never once mentioning that government allowed this stockpile to be low.

There were a few interesting stories within the ranting. Manny and the many people who tried to help him was one of those. More of those stories would have made this book significantly better.

If you are a looking for a book with a few covid stories and a lot of ranting and lecturing about gender and race, this book is for you.