"No other writer has captured the essential truths about illness with as much clarity."
-Annie Dillard
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“Michael Stein is a thoughtful, compassionate, exceptional physician, and the same qualities are evident on every page of Accidental Kindness. These intimate and breath-taking patient stories remind me that the essence of medicine is to ease suffering, however and wherever and in whomever it occurs.”
- Dr. Gavin Francis, author of Adventures in Being Human
"Stein brilliantly interrogates the tension between individual health and the health of the population. He offers a critically important approach for creating a new partnership between the health care and public health systems. This is a daring and original work for our divided times." -- Bapu Jena, MD, PhD, economist and physician at Harvard University and host of Freakonomics, MD
“Stein has come to understand the emotions that patients experience when illness descends, the feeling that the body has betrayed them, the terror of the unknown, the loss of a legion of familiar comforts, and the loneliness of being kidnapped into the land of the ill.” -The New York Times
“Broke is a powerful read, one full of surprising details, that provides a fascinating portrayal of medical patients and their relationship with poverty.Stein lifts up his patients’ voices so we can understand just what they have experienced, and his own voice is gentle, reflective, and empathetic. This is book every doctor and patient should read."
'THE ADDICT' is more than a narrative about the forward and backward steps that lead from addiction to recovery. It's a useful, sensible, and often inspiring guide to how the medical profession does - and should - treat the sick, and the sick at heart." -Francine Prose, The Oprah Magazine
"Brilliant, lyrical, and daring." -Annie Dillard
"With resonant intelligence and the generous irony of Walker Percy or Milan Kundera, this local story about minor medical events enlarges, by virtue of the author's gift, to embrace and illuminate the perils, the abandonments, the dark joys, and the giddy celebrations of being human." -New England Journal of Medicine
"He has drawn an unforgettable picture of the feistiness and resilience of someone who is in the throes of losing who she is. With deft pacing and skillful variations in tone, that it leaves you walking through your own memories of child-parent interactions is testimony to its quiet power." -The Phoenix
