Category Archives: Recommended Reading


A grim but fascinating book

I recently read Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink.  It reconstructs the horrible conditions faced by the staff of a hospital that became an island during Hurricane Katrina. They had no power and no running water, yet still had to care for 180 patients, many of them critically and/or terminally ill.  Temperatures inside reached 110 degrees. What actually happened there is still in dispute–but a doctor and two nurses were arrested for murder of 20 people.  The grand jury failed to indict them.  Was it murder, mercy killing, or administration of comfort care?