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athoughtfulrecord's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.0
cristyd's review
4.0
Powerful account of patient's stories beyond medical descriptions and stats. I appreciated the no judgment (and honest judgment) shared from different perspectives. Thirty years later we can see the impacts of public health approaches to the huge reductions of HIV rates in urban areas. I'm curious how these patterns compare in our rural pockets.
mwhelan's review
4.0
Really illuminating look at how the AIDS crisis affected a smaller, Southern city. I had always thought of the early years of AIDS as a New York/San Francisco thing, mostly. Thus book also made me realize how truly terrible a disease AIDS is.
demandabanana's review
3.0
This just doesn't compare to Cutting for Stone, which was so beautifully written.
maylingkuo's review
4.0
wonderful account of verghese's time in tennessee during the emergence of AIDS cases. i learned so much from his perspective, dealing with the socio-cultural issues around HIV-AIDS stigma, right as the public started to learn about it. the real lives of his patients draw you right in and by the end of the account i felt exhausted, like he was, by the struggles of them all to survive with dignity and respect.
ksparks's review
3.0
This was a very interesting and moving story. It is the first book that I have read about AIDS. I loved this doctor's open-minded curiosity about and empathy with his patients. Sometimes the graphic medical details were too much for me, but overall I felt very moved by his life story, by the slow way in which his vocation pulls him in deeper and deeper into the experience of pain and death and healing.
rlambertdo's review against another edition
3.0
Dr. Verghese earned four of my stars for his fictional [b:Cutting for Stone|3591262|Cutting for Stone|Abraham Verghese|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327931601s/3591262.jpg|3633533], but I only offer three for this memoir. He tells of his years as a rural Tennessee internist, in the era of the discovery of HIV. Verghese shares many vignettes of the HIV patients he managed and the resistance and fear often encountered in the community.
The story is historically interesting, as HIV/AIDs is discovered in urban centers and migrates silently to small-town America. Certainly Verghese performed an enormous service to the Johnson City, TN area in accepting patients otherwise shunned and educating the community concerning the illness. His story must represent many similar scenarios that played-out throughout the United States.
However.
The book became an exercise in tedium and redundancy. And sadly, I often find that physicians often come-off as self-serving when presenting autobiographical material. This may be my problem, because Dr. Verghese is an excellent writer and apparently, a compassionate and gifted physician. Per his memoir. Just sayin'.
The story is historically interesting, as HIV/AIDs is discovered in urban centers and migrates silently to small-town America. Certainly Verghese performed an enormous service to the Johnson City, TN area in accepting patients otherwise shunned and educating the community concerning the illness. His story must represent many similar scenarios that played-out throughout the United States.
However.
The book became an exercise in tedium and redundancy. And sadly, I often find that physicians often come-off as self-serving when presenting autobiographical material. This may be my problem, because Dr. Verghese is an excellent writer and apparently, a compassionate and gifted physician. Per his memoir. Just sayin'.
booksmarttn's review
5.0
An amazing book all on its own. For Verghese's obvious love for the people of East Tennessee and his clear eyed look at all their contradiction, this is a book I recommend that everyone who moves to East Tennessee read. It is one of the best books I've ever read.
hevleary's review against another edition
4.0
This was a very powerful account of the life if an infectious diseases specialist at the time when AIDS was first appearing in his area of rural Tennessee. I loved the writing of Verghese and it felt very like fiction at times and as I had loved his novel, Cutting for Stone, I found this an enjoyable way to tell his story and the stories of his patients.
The personal tales of his first patients and their local support group brought this book to life. I became quite emotionally involved with their stories. It was particularly difficult to read at times when you realised these people were given a death sentence at the time and a horrible death at that with little hope for a viable cure on the horizon. Verghese describes the medical side in a way which it found very interesting and each chapter was peppered with moral and ethical dilemmas which made you think.
Overall a good read into a fascinating period of medical history but also a touchingly personal memoir of a doctor trying to combine his life's work and the demands of a young family
The personal tales of his first patients and their local support group brought this book to life. I became quite emotionally involved with their stories. It was particularly difficult to read at times when you realised these people were given a death sentence at the time and a horrible death at that with little hope for a viable cure on the horizon. Verghese describes the medical side in a way which it found very interesting and each chapter was peppered with moral and ethical dilemmas which made you think.
Overall a good read into a fascinating period of medical history but also a touchingly personal memoir of a doctor trying to combine his life's work and the demands of a young family
eroggbyrne's review against another edition
4.0
I'm giving this book four stars not so much for the writing (it was obvious to me that this was Verghese's first book and could have used some better editing), but because as someone who has now been in the HIV/AIDS field for 8+ years, it was a fascinating look at the early years, in a small, Southern city and unlike many AIDS narratives written now, this was written without the hindsight of now having HAART - by the time the book was written (in 1992), AZT was still the "best" treatment option. I enjoyed Verghese's character descriptions, reflections on being a foreign doctor in the South, obvious love for his patients and his profession, and thoughts on how doctors who perform "procedures" are much more highly compensated than those who don't (still very relevant today!).