A Living: Working-Class Americans Talk to Their Doctor
Michael D. Stein. Melville House, $28.99 (224p) ISBN 978-1-68589-190-9
Boston physician Stein (The Turning Point) offers a glimpse into his working-class patients’ lives in this ambitious if unfocused account. Writing that “there can be no meaningful discourse about health divorced from where people work,” he relays what his patients who “work with their hands” tell him about their jobs (he got into the habit of asking workplace questions during the pandemic, Stein explains). The resulting collection of vignettes is often revealing, especially about how the negative impacts of manual jobs go beyond the purely physical. For example, a bus driver pivots from telling Stein that “by the end of the day, I got this whole-body vibration. It feels like my bones are disintegrating,” to explaining that one of the worst parts of the job is racist treatment from riders. Elsewhere, a floor installer with visible wear and tear to her hands describes feeling compelled to work harder and longer as the only female employee at her company. But the vignettes can sometimes feel too brief, and often the connection between the work and the workers’ health is unexplored, with descriptions of odd or unusual manual work (milking a dog’s anal glands; operating an excavator via joystick), or other job-related problems like too much travel and bad coworkers, serving as the focus. Despite some fascinating moments, this feels like peeking through a window cracked only slightly open. (Apr.)
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Reviewed on: 01/14/2025
Genre: Nonfiction