Rough Sleepers
by
84/99
Critics' Rating Index
88/99
Readers' Rating Index
n/a
Scholars' Citation Index
89/99
Volume of Reviews
90/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
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."
Reviews
"The picture that emerges over the course of the absorbing, inspiring Rough Sleepers is that O'Connell is not only one of the good guys but a good guy who is vigorous, self-critical and even funny ..."
"With a straightforward scrutiny that somehow sees, describes and reveals without flinching or judging, Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Kidder offers a long, hard look at the lives of people without housing in Rough Sleepers: Dr."
"Jim's work and the city's unsheltered population as seen through his eyes, is at its most moving when Kidder's camera zooms in tight on the semi-dysfunctional relationship between Dr."
"Kidder turns his meticulous but generous eye on Jim O'Connell."
"Keenly observed and fluidly written, this is a compassionate report from the front lines of one of America's most intractable social problems."
"Excellent and immersive ..."
"He doesn't hide his admiration for his subjects ..."
"A searching, troubling look at the terrible actualities of homelessness."
"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."
Preview
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!