Taking care The story of nursing and its power to change our world

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Journalist DiGregorio (Early) delivers a compassionate and nuanced history of nursing from the Neolithic period to the present day. Citing archaeological evidence of people born 8,000 years ago with life-threatening disabilities who survived into adulthood, DiGregorio pushes back on the notion that modern nursing sprung "fully formed" out of Victorian England. She also highlights discrimination and prejudice within the profession, noting that Florence Nightingale's work during the Crimean War led to her being hailed as "the founder of modern nursing," while her contemporary Mary Seacole was "mostly forgotten--or condescendingly referred to as 'the Black Nightingale.' " Institutionalized segregation contributed to a nursing shortage during WWII, until the executive secretary of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses convinced leaders of America's armed forces to lift racial quotas. DiGregorio also spotlights Lillian Wald, who founded the Henry Street Settlement in 1893 to provide healthcare to immigrant families in New York City's Lower East Side, and visits the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, where 101-year-old nurse Marcella LeBeau discusses her vocation as "a way of seeing her neighbors' pain--which was also her pain--and skillfully responding to it." Striking an expert balance between the big picture and intimate portraits of individual caregivers, this is an enlightening study of a crucial yet often overlooked profession. (May)

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Review by Library Journal Review

Healthcare journalist DiGregorio (Early: An Intimate History of Premature Birth) credits personal experiences with nurses as the inspiration for this "love letter to nursing's vast possibilities." Skillfully weaving together history, current events, and interviews with a diverse group of nurses, DiGregorio argues that the profession arose from the innate human impulse to care for the vulnerable, and that this concern for others could help solve today's biggest problems if nurses had "the budget, authority, and safety" to do it. Although her subject matter is weighty, DiGregorio employs an engaging, hopeful tone, expertly captured by narrator Ann Marie Gideon. Gideon carefully reads the book's technical passages and movingly presents powerful examples of community advocacy, such as a husband-and-wife nursing duo who travel to churches to deliver diabetes management tips and a nurse who lobbies school systems to purchase air-quality sensors so children aren't sent outside when air quality is bad. VERDICT Anyone interested in improving Americans' quality of life will be inspired by DiGregorio's call to action, dynamically delivered by Gideon, arguing that nurses, as integral members of their communities, can help the country heal from structural inequalities such as racism, sexism, unequal access to information, and poverty.--Beth Farrell

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A warm appreciation of the nursing profession. Freelance journalist DiGregorio, author of Early, a history of premature birth, celebrates nursing in a capacious look at nurses throughout history, from prehistoric times to the present. Rather than focus only on hospital practice, the author sees nursing "as a biological science and as hands-on caring, as professional and as domestic, as skills and as relationships, as knowing in the mind and knowing in the body." Before university-trained physicians dominated medical care, creating a hierarchy that defined nurses as their menial assistants, hands-on caring was provided by lay physicians, herbalists, midwives, members of religious communities, mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, who passed down skills and potions to heal wounds and repair vulnerable bodies. Nursing, the author asserts, did not begin in Victorian England with the tireless--though racist and classist--Florence Nightingale. DiGregorio highlights the work of some famous nurses, including Lillian Wald, who established a visiting nurse system, and birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. But most of her abundant evidence of the crucial and transformative practice of nursing comes through her profiles of community health nurses, first responders, reproductive health providers, nurses-turned-politicians, and hospice nurses. As the largest portion of the workforce, 4 million registered nurses practice in the U.S., and 90% are women. Although there is no nursing shortage, hospitals often cut nursing staff to keep costs low: "Nurses are considered a hospital expense," writes DiGregorio, "because their practice is usually not billable to insurance the way physicians' services are." Overworked and exhausted, many are engaging in collective action, a move the author believes should get active public support. As one nurse told her, "Nursing is a profoundly radical profession that calls society to equality and justice, to trustworthiness and to openness. The profession is, also, radically political: it imagines a world in which the conditions necessary for health are enjoyed by all people." A well-informed consideration of the intimacy of care. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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