| Summary: | "County is the amazing tale of one of America's oldest and most unusual urban public hospitals. From its inception as a 'Poor House' dispensing free medical care to indigents, Chicago's Cook County Hospital has been both a renowned teaching hospital and health care provider of last resort for the uninsured. County covers more than thirty years of the hospital's history, beginning in the late 1970s when the author began his internship, the rhw 'Last Rounds' when hundreds of current and former trainees gathered to bid the enormous, iconic Victorian hospital building an emotional farewell when it was closed to make way for a new facility. Ansell writes of the hundreds of doctors who went throught the rigorous training process with him, sharing his vision of health care as a human right and of resurrecting an embattled hospital in critical condition. County is about people, from Ansell's mentors, including the legendary Quentin Young, to the multitude of patients whom he and County's medical staff labored to diagnose and heal under battlefield conditions. It is a story about politics, from contentious union strikes to battles against 'patient dumping,' and public health, including the AIDS crisis and the opening of one of Chicago's first HIV/AIDS clinics. Finally, it is about an idealistic young man's medical education in urban America, a coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of race, segregation and poverty"--Provided by publisher.
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