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Young Doctors Come of Age in a Pandemic
by Emma Goldberg
The gripping account of six young doctors enlisted to fight COVID-19, an engrossing, eye-opening book in the tradition of both Sheri Fink's Five Days at Memorial and Scott Turow's One L.
In March 2020, soon-to-graduate medical students in New York City were nervously awaiting "match day" when they would learn where they would begin their residencies. Only a week later, these young physicians learned that they would be sent to the front lines of the desperate battle to save lives as the coronavirus plunged the city into crisis.
Taking the Hippocratic Oath via Zoom, these new doctors were sent into iconic New York hospitals including Bellevue and Montefiore, the epicenters of the epicenter. In this powerful book, New York Times journalist Emma Goldberg offers an up-close portrait of six bright yet inexperienced health professionals, each of whom defies a stereotype about who gets to don a doctor's white coat. Goldberg illuminates how the pandemic redefines what it means for them to undergo this trial by fire as caregivers, colleagues, classmates, friends, romantic partners and concerned family members.
Woven together from in-depth interviews with the doctors, their notes, and Goldberg's own extensive reporting, this page-turning narrative is an unforgettable depiction of a crisis unfolding in real time and a timeless and unique chronicle of the rite of passage of young doctors.
"[A] vivid and heart-wrenching portrayal of six doctors who graduated from medical school during the 'first-wave peak' of Covid-19 in New York City....[Goldberg] offers poignant scenes of her subjects coming to grips with the life and death nature of their work. This is a raw and emotional depiction of young professionals thrust into the middle of a crisis." - Publishers Weekly
"A moving account of six medical students who graduated early in order to join the battle against Covid-19...An inspiring story of a group of young doctors who endured a trial by fire." - Kirkus Reviews
"These six young altruists have much to teach us about how doctors are trained, how they think, how they function under pressure, and, most important, why they have chosen their difficult profession. Cynical readers in need of a shot of idealism need look no further than Emma Goldberg's empathetic, well-reported, and moving account." - Anne Fadiman, National Book Critics Circle Award winning author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
"Life on the Line is a fascinating story of rookie doctors in New York City entering the medical profession at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. At a deeper layer, it is also a commentary on the changing faces and culture of medicine, and the implications of these shifts for the patients that we serve." - Damon Tweedy, M.D., author of Black Man in a White Coat
"Emma Goldberg captures a unique moment in modern medical history, when students finishing their schooling are abruptly thrust into the role of bedside doctors to tackle a burgeoning pandemic. Beyond the psychological toll they incur as they struggle to save Covid patients is the real risk to their own health in providing care. Goldberg offers vivid portraits of young physicians who discover deep wells of courage and commitment that will inspire the reader as we take stock of those perilous early days." - Jerome Groopman, M.D., New York Times bestselling author of The Anatomy of Hope
This information about Life on the Line 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.
Emma Goldberg is a reporter at the New York Times, writing for sections such as Health and Science, Styles, Gender, National, and Culture, among others. Her cover stories have featured campus techlash, surgeon moms, young women running for office, and low-income medical students. Since the start of the coronavirus outbreak, she has turned her focus to the lives of students, physicians, and nurses battling the pandemic. She is the winner of the Newswomen's Club of New York Best New Journalist Award and the Sidney Hillman Foundation's Sidney Award. Goldberg received her BA at Yale and MPhil at Cambridge University.
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