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Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town
An intimate, heart wrenching portrait of one small hospital that reveals the magnitude of America's health care crises.
By following the struggle for survival of one small-town hospital, and the patients who walk, or are carried, through its doors, The Hospital takes readers into the world of the American medical industry in a way no book has done before. Americans are dying sooner, and living in poorer health. Alexander argues that no plan will solve America's health crisis until the deeper causes of that crisis are addressed.
Bryan, Ohio's hospital, is losing money, making it vulnerable to big health systems seeking domination and Phil Ennen, CEO, has been fighting to preserve its independence. Meanwhile, Bryan, a town of 8,500 people in Ohio's northwest corner, is still trying to recover from the Great Recession. As local leaders struggle to address the town's problems, and the hospital fights for its life amid a rapidly consolidating medical and hospital industry, a 39-year-old diabetic literally fights for his limbs, and a 55-year-old contractor lies dying in the emergency room. With these and other stories, Alexander strips away the wonkiness of policy to reveal Americans' struggle for health against a powerful system that's stacked against them, but yet so fragile it blows apart when the pandemic hits. Culminating with COVID-19, this book offers a blueprint for how we created the crisis we're in.
"[S]uperb...A deeply insightful and disheartening portrait of America's diseased health care system." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Journalist Alexander delivers an anguished and incisive look at the struggles of an independent community hospital in northwestern Ohio...This wrenching account brilliantly diagnoses the flaws in America's healthcare system." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Alexander's scorching reportage provides a distressing, infuriating picture of health care delivery and highlights the heroic fight of a little hospital and humble hamlet to stay vital." - Booklist (starred review)
"The Hospital is a heart-rending and unforgettable real-time journalistic deep dive. With the Affordable Care Act at the center of our national debate, I can't think of a more timely book. The doctors, nurses and medical technicians in these pages are front-line heroes. Highly recommended!" - Douglas Brinkley, Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, author of The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
"A brilliantly imaginative and creative way of telling the story of today's America and the roots of what ails it, through the travails of a small-town hospital. In The Hospital, Brian Alexander does again so well what he did in Glass House―telling the big story from the small place." - Sam Quinones, author of Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
"The Hospital is a stunning achievement―closely observed, deeply compassionate and beautifully written. What The Wire did for the Baltimore drug trade, The Hospital does for the business of healthcare in a struggling Rust Belt community... It's not just good―it's important." - Carl Elliott, MD, PhD, Professor, University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics
"Brian Alexander, a master storyteller, delivers an extraordinary tale about a community hospital fighting for its life in America's heartland. He shows us why rural hospitals matter." - Eric Eyre, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Death In Mud Lick
"With his signature gut-punching prose, Alexander breaks our hearts as he opens our eyes to America's deep-rooted sickness and despair by immersing us in the lives of a small town hospital and the people it serves. " - Beth Macy, bestselling author of Dopesick
This information about The Hospital was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Shelley Metcalf
Brian Alexander, the author of Glass House and winner of the Ohioana Book Awards, is a contributing writer to The Atlantic. He's written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, among others. He's spoken at The Obama Foundation Summit, and in Washington to members of the Senate and House of Representatives. He lives in San Diego.
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