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Doctor

Series: Object Lessons
3.82 goodreads logo

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( 55 ratings, 21 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Doctor explores the complex and often misunderstood role of physicians in modern medicine. Inspired by a young child’s simple question about his job, Dr. Andrew Bomback takes readers on a thoughtful journey through the challenges doctors face in defining their profession amidst patients, insurers, media, and personal experiences. Drawing on his father’s distinguished career as a paediatrician and his own family’s health struggles, Bomback blends humour, honesty, and analysis to reveal the artifice and vulnerability embedded in the medical calling.
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Format: Paperback / softback
$2199
AVAILABLE WITH SUPPLIER Ships from our Auckland warehouse within 4-6 weeks

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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

Ideal for readers interested in healthcare, medical professionals, students, and those curious about the personal and cultural dimensions of medicine today.

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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

A 3-year-old asks her physician father about his job, and his inability to provide a succinct and accurate answer inspires a critical look at the profession of modern medicine.

In sorting through how patients, insurance companies, advertising agencies, filmmakers, and comedians misconstrue a doctor’s role, Andrew Bomback, M.D., realises that even doctors struggle to define their profession. As the author attempts to unravel how much of doctoring is role-playing, artifice, and bluffing, he examines the career of his father, a legendary paediatrician on the verge of retirement, and the health of his infant son, who is suffering from a vague assortment of gastrointestinal symptoms.

At turns serious, comedic, analytical, and confessional, Doctor offers an unflinching look at what it means to be a physician today.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Series: Object Lessons

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  • Bicycle
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. These days the bicycle often appears as an interloper in a world constructed for cars. An almost miraculous 19th-century contraption, the bicycle promises to transform our lives and the world we live in, yet its time seems always yet-to-come or long-gone-by. Bicycle by...
    Paperback
    $2199
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  • Rust
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. It’s happening all the time, all around us. We cover it up. We ignore it. Rust takes on the many meanings of this oxidised substance, showing how technology bleeds into biology and ecology. Jean-Michel RabatΓ© combines art, science, and autobiography to share his...
    Paperback
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  • Bookshelf
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Every shelf is different, and every bookshelf tells a different story. One bookshelf can creak with character in a bohemian coffee shop, while another can groan with gravitas in the Library of Congress. Bookshelf by writer and historian Lydia Pyne explores these differences...
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  • Burger
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The burger, long the All-American meal, is undergoing an identity crisis. From its shifting place in popular culture to efforts by investors such as Bill Gates to create the non-animal burger that can feed the world, the burger’s identity has become as malleable...
    Paperback
    $2199
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  • Cigarette Lighter
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Smokers, survivalists, teenagers, collectors… The cigarette lighter is a charged, complex, yet often entirely disposable object that moves across these various groups of people, acquiring and emitting different meanings while always supplying its primary function, that of ignition. While the lighter may seem...
    Paperback
    $2199
    Available
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  • Earth
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. In Earth, a planetary scientist and a literary humanist explore what happens when we think of the Earth as an object viewable from space. As a β€œblue marble,” β€œa blue pale dot,” or, as Chaucer described it, β€œthis litel spot of erthe,” the...
    Paperback
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  • Egg
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. This book is about a strange objectβ€”strange in part because it is something that we all have been, and that many of us eat. Nicole Walker's Egg relishes in sharp juxtapositions of seemingly fanciful or repellent topics, so that reproductive science and gustatory...
    Paperback
    $2199
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  • Eye Chart
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Desert nomads tested their vision by distinguishing a pair of stars. But we have since created more disquieting ways to test the strength of the eyes. Reading the eye chart is an exercise in failure, since it only gets interesting when you cannot...
    Paperback
    $2099
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  • High Heel
    Best Fifteen Books of March 2019, Refinery29Best Nonfiction Books of 2019, Paste Magazine Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Fetishized, demonized, celebrated, and outlawed, the high heel is central to the iconography of modern womanhood. But are high heels good? Are they feminist? What does it mean for a...
    Paperback
    $2199
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  • Hood
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. We all wear hoods: the Grim Reaper, Red Riding Hood, torturers, executioners and the executed, athletes, labourers, anarchists, rappers, babies in onesies, and anyone who’s ever grabbed a hoodie on a chilly day. Alison Kinney’s Hood explores the material and symbolic vibrancy of...
    Paperback
    $2199
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  • Jet Lag
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Jet lag is a momentary condition resulting from the human body and its inner clock being pitched against the time-leaping effects of modern aviation. But more than that, it is a situation that explains time, technology, and the human body. Jet lag epitomises...
    Paperback
    $2199
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  • Mushroom
    Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. They are the things we step on without noticing and the largest organisms on Earth. They are symbols of inexplicable growth and excruciating misery. They are grouped with plants, but they behave more like animals. In their inscrutability, mushrooms are wondrous organisms. The...
    Paperback
    $2199
    Available
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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Praised for its empathetic insight, Doctor is described as a beautifully composed, candid reflection on medicine. Reviewers applaud its intelligence and humour, noting its suitability for medical students and anyone interested in the human dynamics of healthcare. It offers a quick, accessible read that prompts deeper contemplation on power, vulnerability, and fate in the doctor-patient relationship.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781501338175

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 20 September 2018

Country: United States

Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 16.0mm

Width: 120.0mm

Height: 164.0mm

Weight: 164g

Pages: 176

About the Author

Andrew Bomback, M.D., is Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, USA. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, The Millions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, New Delta Review, Essay Daily, and Hobart.

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