Rough Sleepers
by
86/99
Critics
90/99
Readers
n/a
Scholars
82/99
Rating
89/99
Volume
89/99
Rating
92/99
Volume
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About This Book
In Rough Sleepers, Tracy Kidder shows how one person can make a difference, as he tells the story of Dr. Jim O'Connell, a man who invented ways to create a community of care for a city's unhoused population, including those who sleep on the streets—the "rough sleepers." When Jim O'Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, the chief of medicine made a proposal: Would he defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? Jim took the job because he felt he couldn't refuse. But that year turned into his life's calling. Tracy Kidder spent five years following Dr. O'Connell and his colleagues as they served their thousands of homeless patients. In this book, we travel with O'Connell as he navigates the city, offering medical care, socks, soup, empathy, humor, and friendship to some of the city's most vulnerable citizens. He emphasizes a style of medicine in which patients come first, joined with their providers in what he calls "a system of friends."
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Reviews
"Kidder describes with modesty and compassion."
"Tracy Kidder, a master of narrative nonfiction, is drawn to self-effacing, unsung heroes who work tirelessly to make the world a better place."
"He just asks us — correctly, I think — to consider that in a world of far too much cruelty, the compassionate person standing at the bottom of the cliff is part of the story too."
"Excellent and immersive ..."
"Jim O'Connell's Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People."
"A searching, troubling look at the terrible actualities of homelessness."
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