“[A] remarkable portrait . . . Salamon succeeds in providing a completely unique, three-dimensional and compellingly human perspective of the demanding work — both frustrating and rewarding that is not always apparent to hospital patients and their families.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The fine grain of Ms Salamon's observations allows her to paint a compelling—and damning—portrait of a dysfunctional health-care system… Its careful documentation of financial crises, feuds, personality clashes and, most of all, life-and-death drama it feeds the same appetite for pathos, intrigue, tragedy and redemption…as the current plethora of medical programs.”
“I've never had much interest in hospitals (or been able to sit through an episode of "ER"), but as Salamon expertly sucked me into the saga of Maimonides, I realized this was about more than white coats, scalpels and beeping consoles. This place was 21st century America in a microcosm.”
— Laura Miller, Salon (lead review)
“Reading HOSPITAL feels a little like watching one of those speeding-gurney sequences on ER — fast pasted, high stakes, and crowded with colorful characters all shouting at once. The difference is that Julie Salamon's book is more informative, more nuanced, and closer to reality....Ultimately, HOSPITAL is immensely heartening. If there is hope for our overburdened healthcare system, Salamon's book suggests, we can thank the decent, thoughtful men and women laboring overtime to improve the quality of life — and death — in our gloriously lumpy American melting pot.”
—Francine Prose, O Magazine
“There's "ER," there's "Grey's Anatomy," and then there's this real, true-life drama of the barely controllable chaos that actually rules in a huge metropolitan hospital, by one of America's best fly-on-the-wall reporters, Julie Salamon.”
— Tom Wolfe, author of I Am Charlotte Simmons
“Salamon goes beyond the sharp conflicts of ego, culture, and competition in a hospital and finds a community still rooted in compassion and caring. A unique and revealing book that captures the tensions and triumphs of today's medicine.”
— Dr. Jerome Groopman, author of How Doctors Think
“Julie Salamon is simply one of our best writers. Her keen reportorial eye, her vivid and assured prose, and most of all, the tremendous compassion she shows for the people in her story, are on full display in “Hospital.” Here is an institution at the crossroads of humanity, into which Salamon inserted herself for a full year, capturing personal details of remarkable intimacy as well as the sweep of a great story.”
— James B. Stewart, author of Den of Thieves
