Summary and Reviews of The Doctors Blackwell by Janice Nimura

Media Reviews

New York Times A culture that valorizes heroes insists on consistency, and the Blackwell sisters liked to see themselves as unwavering stewards of lofty ideals. But Nimura, by digging into their deeds and their lives, finds those discrepancies and idiosyncrasies that yield a memorable portrait. The Doctors Blackwell also opens up a sense of possibility — you don’t always have to mean well on all fronts in order to do a lot of good.

Washington Post Nimura often sidesteps details of the Blackwells’ private lives and at times presents too much information, particularly about their clothing and residences. Despite the periodic narrative detours, the book moves at a lively pace...[A] smart double biography.

Booklist (starred review) With the fiercely intelligent, prickly sisters at the center, Nimura's engrossing and enlightening group biography is highly recommended.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review) [R]iveting...Nimura is careful never to embellish one sister's character at the expense of the other. As she clearly demonstrates, each possessed characteristic strengths and weaknesses. A compellingly portrayed and vividly realized biography of triumph and trailblazing.

Library Journal (starred review) Nimura has done extensive research on her subjects, using archives, letters, contemporary writings, and secondary materials to bring their stories to life. This book is an excellent read for those interested in the history of medicine and those who enjoy a well-written biography.

Publishers Weekly (starred review) In recounting the lives of two ambitious figures who opened doors for many who came after them, Nimura casts a thoughtful and revelatory new light onto women's and medical history.

 Danielle Ofri, American Scholar Nimura writes fluidly, and her book is an engaging and meticulously documented guide not only to the sisters' lives but also to the medical practices of their time. We hear about obsolete medical treatments (intravaginal leeches), student ingenuity (stuffing medical textbooks under clothes to avoid paying taxes) and New York trivia (the Blackwell's infirmary on Bleecker Street was a former Roosevelt residence). But the greater part of Nimura's achievement lies in how she brings new life to the story of two extraordinary and idiosyncratic physicians who forever changed the medical profession.

 Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life The Doctors Blackwell should be required reading in all medical schools, indeed for anyone who has ever consulted a doctor. This rousing story of two brilliant and determined nineteenth-century sisters is also a history of American medicine?how it was practiced and by whom. That the Blackwells arrived in the United States during a cholera epidemic and made it their mission to provide medical care to the underserved, while also promoting the twin causes of women's rights and abolition, brings this narrative hurtling into the twenty-first century, demanding our attention today.

 Perri Klass, author of A Good Time to Be Born All doctors and all patients owe a debt to these eccentric, determined, brilliant characters, Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell, who found their way across the strange and bloody landscape of nineteenth-century medicine and transformed it forever, all brilliantly conjured in Janice P. Nimura's wonderful book.

Reader Reviews

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