“Dr. Dora Wang blows the whistle on the heath-care industry; for-profit insurance corporations are obstructing the relationship between physician and patient. As the nation works on a plan to provide better medical care, it is vitally important to read The Kitchen Shrink. This book reminds us of the noble goal to provide healing medicine to the benefit of all.”
—Maxine Hong Kingston, National Book Award Winner
“What a wonderful book, so full of heart and wisdom and generosity. I wish everyone in the country would read it.”
—Karen Joy Fowler, Author of the Jane Austen Book Club
“As a skilled narrator Dora Wang brings to life that dangerous shift away from the art of medicine to the person repair business, with all of the attendant misery of the doctors as well as the patients at risk. Our health care system is sick. Here is a doctor who knows how to prescribe for it. The Kitchen Shrink should be required reading for all of our legislators involved in the national debate.”
—Alan Cheuse, Author of To the Lightning
“A thoroughly compelling message—without an ethical commitment to the value of every life, “the very humanity of our society” is at stake.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred (read more)
“Her personal story dovetails with an account of a medical profession floundering under an ever-increasing avalance of paperwork, driven by and a consequence of the profit motive. This all began, she says, in the 1980s with deregulation….That the current health-care crisis has caused anguish and even physical illness in Wang and her like-minded peers registers near palpably.
—Booklist, Donna Chavez
“Part memoir, part medical history, Wang’s timely new book reflects on how her career in medicine has changed over time. Wang argues that instead of placing importance on its patients, the health-care industry only has eyes for dollar signs.”
—MORE Magazine, Gabrielle Frank
“Dr. Dora Calott Wang skilfully uses the literary form of the memoir to argue that the for-profit insurance industry is taking over health care.”
—Albuquerque Journal, David Steinberg
“An intimate, thoughtful memoir that documents Wang’s experiences navigating the American medical system, fighting for her patients’ best interests, and protecting her own mental and physical health. Part memoir, part rallying cry, this compelling book lends a profoundly human face to American health care, which, as its author so aptly observes, has become more about business than humanity.”
—New Mexico Magazine, Ashley M. Biggers
“Psychiatrist Dora Calott Wang says that, like most physicians these days, she practices “a strange new kind of doctoring.” It’s the kind of doctoring in which life-and-death decisions are made less often by doctors and patients and more frequently by the managed-healthcare industry.”
—Pasatiempo Magazine, Casey Sanchez
“Sharing patient stories and personal experiences, Wang shows how medicine has moved from a caring business to one driven by profit.”
—Pasadena Star News
“The Kitchen Shrink is a riveting, emotional journey of how one young woman doctor tries to fight an ailing medical system, as it transforms into the for-profit healthcare industry. Dr. Wang’s story is a beautifully told, first-person account of how her professional life devolved from one of altruism as a new medical school graduate – where the patient always came first – to the profit -driven emphasis of today’s medicine.”
—Borders Bookstore, Santa Fe, New Mexico
“In this well-written and moving memoir, Dora describes the dismantling of the mental health safety net. Hospitals close, ill patients are turned out on the streets, and others die because their insurance plans deny them much-needed medical care. In the middle of this gloom, Dora has a baby girl…”
—SF Gate, The San Francisco Chronicle Online, Frances Dinkelspiel (read more)
“Dora Wang’s The Kitchen Shrink is really two books. The first is a fascinating account of a young woman’s medical school education, written with wit and empathy; the second, her personal struggles with the changes in her profession, that bring new insight into the healthcare debate. Dora Wang’s is a fresh voice and one that commands our attention.”
—David Musto, M.D., Yale School of Medicine
“In this thoroughly engaging memoir, we accompany Dr. Dora Calott Wang as she and her patients grapple with disruptive upheavals that have profoundly impacted medical care of the past several decades. In profoundly moving, humane life and death stories, Dr. Wang raises very large questions about how the health insurance business and for-profit forces have impacted not just medicine, but our humanity, and what type of society we’ve become.”
—Joel Yager, M.D., UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry
“The Kitchen Shrink is a fast-paced memoir that moves through the career of author Dora Calott Wang, M.D. as she transitions in and out of large hospital systems in her work as a psychiatrist… The Kitchen Shrink carries an important message, with the power to enlighten each of us about the American medical system today… Here is Dr. Wang’s message: ‘How we move forward in this predicament of health care will say everything about who we are as a civilization. At the same time, it will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the foundational premises of this nation.’”
—Blogcritics, Helen Gallagher
“Wang keeps this book as interesting as the latest novel. It should be required reading for everyone.”
—Story Circle Book Reviews, Penny Leisch