Citation

Baruch J. Hastings Cent. Rep. 2014; 44(2): 46-47.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences)

DOI

10.1002/hast.288

PMID

24634047

Abstract

On September 1, 2005, Memorial Hospital was on "survival mode." Hurricane Katrina had felled the levees of New Orleans, submerging a modern city with floodwaters of biblical proportions, tasking physicians and nurses to make morally sound decisions under unprecedented conditions, where, as one physician stated, "[T]he laws of man and the normal standards of medicine no longer applied" (p. 9). In Five Days at Memorial, Sheri Fink, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, resists the urge to assign easy blame or take a position. Instead, she weaves together the perspectives of a cast of people tested by this catastrophe and constructs a tapestry of experiences that isn't neat and comforting but disturbing, compelling, and admirable all at once.

Language: en