Memorial Hospital back in the news thanks to Sheri Fink's new book recalling hurricane Katrina

NEW ORLEANS - Sept. 14, 2013 - PRLog -- New Orleans' Memorial Hospital is back in the news thanks to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Sheri Fink's new book Five Days at Memorial recalling the events at the hospital during hurricane Katrina.  Carolyn Perry's book For Better, For Worse also tells the patient's perspective.

About Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (from Amazon.com)

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 to 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 health professionals 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 in America 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.

Hardcover: 576 pages

Publisher: Crown (September 10, 2013)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0307718964

ISBN-13: 978-0307718969

Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 2 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #66 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

#2 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology > Medicine

#3 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology > Death

#3 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Disaster Relief

About For Better, For Worse: Patient in the Maelstrom by Carolyn Perry

A hospital. A hurricane. An English professor in the throes of chemotherapy, his wife at his side. Carolyn Perry and her husband Bob were that couple, trapped by Katrina and marooned at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans after the levees breached, flooding the city. In For Better, For Worse: Patient in the Maelstrom, Carolyn Perry tells the gripping story of two people in a loving marriage, fighting a relentless disease and swept up in the chaos of a man-made disaster.

Carolyn Perry is the former Director of the Writing Center at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania, where she and her husband taught in the English Department. She's a graduate of the University of Dallas and Washington University in St. Louis. She lives in New Orleans.

For Better, For Worse: Patient in the Maelstrom

Authored by Carolyn Perry

List Price: $14.95

5.5" x 8.5" (13.97 x 21.59 cm)

Black & White on Cream paper

218 pages

Sunbury Press, Inc.

ISBN-13: 978-1934597422

ISBN-10: 1934597422

BISAC: Family & Relationships / Death, Grief, Bereavement

For more information about Five Days at Memorial, please see:

http://www.amazon.com/Five-Days-Memorial-Storm-Ravaged-Ho...

For more information about For Better, For Worse, please see:

http://www.amazon.com/Better-Worse-Patient-Maelstrom/dp/1...