Taking Care

Nurses are there at the start and often at the end of life. They work in hospitals and doctors' offices, but also in schools, prisons, private homes, summer camps, aboard cruise ships, and at NASA. Although nurses were praised during the pandemic, the modern healthcare system still belittles them. Sexism and racism shape how the profession is treated, and the effects reach their working conditions and the care every patient receives. Even so, nursing still holds the potential to build a healthier and fairer world.

Journalist Sarah DiGregorio traces nursing from the Stone Age to the present, showing how the work is bound up with war, plague, religion, and the economy as well as with individual lives. She tells the stories of earlier nurses and profiles today's caregivers, many of whom are changing their communities quietly and without much recognition. Blending narrative storytelling with careful reporting, she examines the ways societies have tried to look after one another, including both their successes and their failures.

The book is organized around four threads: the largely unwritten history of nursing on the front lines of war and plague, the ways misogyny and racism have held the profession back and how nurses push back against them, the lives of present-day nurses working at the crossroads of health care and community, and a case for valuing the profession and rethinking how care is delivered to everyone. It suits readers interested in the history of medicine, social justice, and the people who keep health systems running.