Kitchen Confidential meets The Pitt when former Ground Zero paramedic and physician assistant turned bookseller, Adam Axler, chronicles his front row seat at the decline of Western medicine. Whether it’s vaccines, vaginas, or vibrator removals, the machinations and demise of American medicine are revealed through sarcasm and tough love, offset by moments of connection and tenderness.
American Triage includes a terrifying 24 hour real-time account of September 11th. The aftermath will leave you crying and angry, and set the stage for solidifying Axler’s determination to be of service and subsequently a lifetime of disappointment. Why taking the science out of medicine has been disastrous for both its present and its future. And why your own participation in its destruction is much grayer than you think.
This hybrid memoir is hilarious and heartbreaking. So, step inside. It’s time to be triaged.
Praise
“Smart, scary, hilarious, horrifying, sane, insane, tender, angry, truthful, grotesque. Both a nightmare and a testament to the power of love (and the love of books!). If Charles Willeford or Philip K Dick had worked in American health care they might have written a memoir like this. Disturbing, inspiring, fantastic. Read it!”
—Paul Giamatti, Actor & Bibliophile
“Adam Axler’s fantastic medical memoir pulls back the curtain on emergency medicine in the United States with writing that is both irreverent and deeply moving. Axler brings to memoir what I love about science-fiction: the ability to tackle dystopian themes in a way that is intensely readable and deeply critical of contemporary society, and yet somehow hopeful.”
—Tesla Monson, PhD Professor of anthropology & author of Beginnings
“American Triage gave me the gift of laugh-out-loud moments that perhaps resonate most with those of us who have shared similar years of work in the trenches. But more than humor, the vignettes of patients force us to look eye to eye with the current state of medicine in American, which is at times bleak. Axler’s book is an homage to the people who care for us and also a call to action.”
—Dr. Mary Fariba Afsari, Author Labor: One Woman’s Work