Features
NOW IN PAPERBACK with Updated Epilogue and New Eight Page Full-color Photo Insert
AWARDS
WINNER, NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
WINNER, PEN/JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH AWARD
WINNER, RIDENHOUR BOOK AWARD
WINNER, J. ANTHONY LUKAS BOOK PRIZE
WINNER, LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE
WINNER, SOUTHERN INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS ALLIANCE BOOK AWARD
WINNER, AMERICAN MEDICAL WRITERS ASSOCIATION MEDICAL BOOK AWARD
WINNER, NASW SCIENCE IN SOCIETY JOURNALISM BOOK AWARD
ACCOLADES and PRAISE
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW BEST BOOK OF 2013 (TOP FIVE NONFICTION)
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
#1 NEW YORK TIMES SCIENCE BESTSELLER LIST
WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’S #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF 2013
A TIME MAGAZINE BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF 2013
A CHICAGO TRIBUNE TOP TEN BOOK OF 2013
A SEATTLE TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
AN NPR FIRST READ SELECTION
A LIBRARY JOURNAL TOP TEN BOOK OF 2013
A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF 2013
MSNBC’S MORNING JOE BOOK CLUB INAUGURAL PICK
A 2012 BARNES & NOBLE DISCOVER GREAT NEW WRITERS PICK
A NIEMAN REPORTS TOP TEN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM BOOK OF 2013
“A stunning feat of journalism.”
—New York Review of Books
“What we have here is masterly reporting and the glow of fine writing.”
—Sherwin B. Nuland, New York Times Book Review
“Every page gives evidence of meticulous research, thousands of hours spent interviewing, prowling the halls at Memorial, reviewing legal documents and transcripts…[Fink] offers no easy answers, no rush to judgment. But she does deliver an amazing tale, as inexorable as a Greek tragedy and as gripping as a whodunit.”
—Dallas Morning News
“Fink has done a masterful reporting job, and Five Days at Memorial is often engrossing, particularly those pages that take readers inside the hospital…Fink’s book is essential reading for anyone who cares about New Orleans, the breakdown of order in disaster zones, and medical dilemmas under crisis circumstances.”
—Boston Globe
“Fink, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who trained as a physician, writes powerfully of the investigation into the Memorial deaths and, in her epilogue, of subsequent disasters: the earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast, an influenza pandemic in India.”
—Radhika Jones, TIME
“Powerful…Fink, a trained physician turned journalist, is able to re-create in minute detail the sights, smells and sounds of Memorial in the days following the storm. It’s safe to say that her medical background gave her a unique perspective, which, coupled with her fine writing, offers the reader an evocative narrative of how the hospital staff and patients struggled to cope with the lack of electricity, climbing temperatures, and a sense that they might not make it out alive.”
—USAToday.com
“It’s a marvel of journalistic effort that brings an objective and sympathetic eye to the suffering and tough decisions at Memorial Medical Center.”
—Bloomberg
“Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sheri Fink spells out the story of Memorial – and its consequences – in a book that is as excellent as it is alarming.”
—Christian Science Monitor
FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL
Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
By Sheri Fink
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink’s landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina – and her suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice.
In the tradition of the best investigative journalism, physician and reporter Sheri Fink reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and maintain life amid chaos.
After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several of those caregivers faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths.
Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting, unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing the reader into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing.
In a voice at once involving and fair, masterful and intimate, Fink exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are for the impact of large-scale disasters—and how we can do better. A remarkable book, engrossing from start to finish, Five Days at Memorial radically transforms your understanding of human nature in crisis.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SHERI FINK is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital about choices made in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She is a correspondent at the New York Times, where her and her colleagues’ stories on the West Africa Ebola crisis were recognized with the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, the George Polk Award for health reporting, and the Overseas Press Club Hal Boyle Award. Her story “The Deadly Choices at Memorial,” co-published by ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine, received a 2010 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting and a National Magazine Award for reporting. A former relief worker in disaster and conflict zones, Fink received her M.D. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. Her first book, War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival (PublicAffairs), is about medical professionals under siege during the genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Five Days at Memorial was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for nonfiction, the Ridenhour Book Prize, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Book Award, the American Medical Writers Association Medical Book Award, and the NASW Science in Society Journalism Book Award.
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