Welcome to Litsy!

The powerful story of an inspiring doctor who made a difference, by helping to create a program to care for Boston�s homeless community�by the Pulitzer Prize�winning, New York Times bestselling author of Mountains Beyond Mountains �I couldn�t put Rough Sleepers down. I am left in awe of the human spirit and inspired to do better.��Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone Tracy Kidder has been described by The Baltimore Sun as a �master of the nonfiction narrative.� In Rough Sleepers, Kidder shows how one person can make a difference, as he tells the story of Dr. Jim O�Connell, a gifted man who invented ways to create a community of care for a city�s unhoused population, including those who sleep on the streets�the �rough sleepers.� When Jim O�Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, the chief of medicine made a proposal: Would he defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? Jim took the job because he felt he couldn�t refuse. But that year turned into his life�s calling. Tracy Kidder spent five years following Dr. O�Connell and his colleagues as they served their thousands of homeless patients. In this illuminating book we travel with O�Connell as he navigates the city, offering medical care, socks, soup, empathy, humor, and friendship to some of the city�s most endangered citizens. He emphasizes a style of medicine in which patients come first, joined with their providers in what he calls �a system of friends.� Much as he did with Paul Farmer in Mountains Beyond Mountains, Kidder explores how a small but dedicated group of people have changed countless lives by facing one of American society�s difficult problems instead of looking away.