It Shouldn't be this Hard to Serve Your Country PDF Download

Author: David J. Shulkin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781541762633
Category : POLITICAL SCIENCE
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The former VA secretary describes his fight to save health care from politics and money-and how it was ultimately derailed by a small group of unelected officials with influence in the Trump White House. Known in health care circles for his ability to fix ailing hospitals, Dr. David Shulkin was originally brought into government by President Obama, in an attempt to save the broken Department of Veterans Affairs. When President Trump made him VA secretary, Dr. Shulkin was as shocked as anyone. Yet this surprise was trivial compared to what Shulkin encountered as the VA secretary: a team of political appointees devoted to stopping anyone-including the secretary himself-who stood in the way of privatizing the organization and implementing their agenda. In this uninhibited memoir, Shulkin opens up about why the government has long struggled to get good medical care to military veterans and the plan he had for how to address these problems. This is a book about the commitment we make to the people who risk their lives for our country, how and why we've failed to honor it, and why the new administration may be taking us in the wrong direction.

Author: David Shulkin
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541762649
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
The former VA secretary describes his fight to save veteran health care from partisan politics and how his efforts were ultimately derailed by a small group of unelected officials appointed by the Trump White House. Known in health care circles for his ability to turn around ailing hospitals, Dr. David Shulkin was originally brought into government by President Obama to save the beleaguered Department of Veterans Affairs. When President Trump appointed him as secretary of the VA, Shulkin was as shocked as anyone. Yet this surprise was trivial compared to what Shulkin encountered as secretary: a team of political appointees devoted to stopping anyone -- including the secretary himself -- who stood in the way of privatizing the agency and implementing their political agenda. In this uninhibited memoir, Shulkin opens up about why the government has long struggled to provide good medical care to military veterans and the plan he had to solve these problems. This is a book about the commitment we make to the men and women who risk their lives fighting for our country, how the VA was finally beginning to live up to it, and why the new administration may now be taking us in the wrong direction.

Author: Suzanne Gordon
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501730843
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
U.S. military conflicts abroad have left nine million Americans dependent on the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) for medical care. Their "wounds of war" are treated by the largest hospital system in the country—one that has come under fire from critics in the White House, on Capitol Hill, and in the nation's media. In Wounds of War, Suzanne Gordon draws on five years of observational research to describe how the VHA does a better job than private sector institutions offering primary and geriatric care, mental health and home care services, and support for patients nearing the end of life. In the unusual culture of solidarity between patients and providers that the VHA has fostered, Gordon finds a working model for higher-quality health care and a much-needed alternative to the practice of for-profit medicine.

Author: Ian Mosby
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774827645
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
During the Second World War, as Canada struggled to provide its allies with food, public health officials warned that malnutrition could derail the war effort. Posters admonished Canadians to "Eat Right" because "Canada Needs You Strong" while cookbooks helped housewives become "housoldiers" through food rationing, menu substitutions, and household production. Ian Mosby explores the symbolic and material transformations that food and eating underwent as the Canadian state took unprecedented steps into the kitchens of the nation, changing the way women cooked, what their families ate, and how people thought about food. Canadians, in turn, rallied around food and nutrition to articulate new visions of citizenship for a new peacetime social order.

Author: Jerri Bell
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 161234934X
Category : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
This inspiring anthology it the first to convey the noteworthy experiences and contributions of women in the American military in their own words-from the Revolutionary War to the present wars in the Middle East. Serving with the Union Army during the Civil War as a nurse, scout, spy, and soldier, Harriet Tubman tells what it was like to be the first American woman to lead a raid against an enemy, freeing some 750 slaves. Busting gender stereotypes, Inga Fredriksen Ferris's describes how it felt to be a woman marine during World War II. Heidi Squier Kraft recounts her experiences as a lieutenant commander in the navy, deployed to Iraq as a psychologist to provide mental health care in a combat zone. In excerpts from their diaries, letters, oral histories, military depositions and testimonies, as well as from published and unpublished memoirs-generations of women reveal why and how they chose to serve their country, often breaking with social norms and at great personal peril.

Author: Suzanne Gordon
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501714562
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
In The Battle for Veterans' Healthcare, award-winning author Suzanne Gordon takes us to the front lines of federal policymaking and healthcare delivery, as it affects eight million Americans whose military service makes them eligible for Veterans Health Administration (VHA) coverage. Gordon’s collected dispatches provide insight and information too often missing from mainstream media reporting on the VHA and from Capitol Hill debates about its future. Drawing on interviews with veterans and their families, VHA staff and administrators, health care policy experts and Congressional decision makers, Gordon describes a federal agency under siege that nevertheless accomplishes its difficult mission of serving men and women injured, in myriad ways, while on active duty. The Battle for Veterans’ Healthcare is an essential primer on VHA care and a call to action by veterans, their advocacy organizations, and political allies. Without lobbying efforts and broader public understanding of what’s at stake, a system now functioning far better than most private hospital systems may end up looking more like them, to the detriment of patients and providers alike.

Author: George Stephanopoulos
Publisher: Back Bay Books
ISBN: 0316041920
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
All Too Human is a new-generation political memoir, written from the refreshing perspective of one who got his hands on the levers of awesome power at an early age. At thirty, the author was at Bill Clinton's side during the presidential campaign of 1992, & for the next five years he was rarely more than a step away from the president & his other advisers at every important moment of the first term. What Liar's Poker did to Wall Street, this book will do to politics. It is an irreverent & intimate portrait of how the nation's weighty business is conducted by people whose egos & idiosyncrasies are no sturdier than anyone else's. Including sharp portraits of the Clintons, Al Gore, Dick Morris, Colin Powell, & scores of others, as well as candid & revelatory accounts of the famous debacles & triumphs of an administration that constantly went over the top, All Too Human is, like its author, a brilliant combination of pragmatic insight & idealism. It is destined to be the most important & enduring book to come out of the Clinton administration.

Author: Toby Young
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0786722509
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
In 1995 high-flying British journalist Toby Young left London for New York to become a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Other Brits had taken Manhattan-Alistair Cooke then, Anna Wintour now-so why couldn't he? But things didn't quite go according to plan. Within the space of two years he was fired from Vanity Fair, banned from the most fashionable bar in the city, and couldn't get a date for love or money. Even the local AA group wanted nothing to do with him. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is Toby Young's hilarious account of the five years he spent looking for love in all the wrong places and steadily working his way down the New York food chain, from glossy magazine editor to crash-test dummy for interactive sex toys. But it's more than "the longest self-deprecating joke since the complete works of Woody Allen" (Sunday Times); it's also a seditious attack on the culture of celebrity from inside the belly of the beast. And there's even a happy ending, as Toby Young marries-"for proper, noncynical reasons," as he puts it-the woman of his dreams. "Some people are lucky enough to stumble across the right path straight away; most of us only discover what the right one is by going down the wrong one first." "I'll rot in hell before I give that little bastard a quote for his book." -- Julie Burchill "A relentlessly brilliant book-a What Makes Sammy Run for the twenty-first century . . . the funniest, cleverest, most touching new book I've read for as long as I can remember." -- Julie Burchill, The Spectator

Author: Mike Hayes
Publisher: Celadon Books
ISBN: 9781250753373
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Mike Hayes has lived a lifetime of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. He has been held at gunpoint and threatened with execution. He's jumped out of a building rigged to explode, helped amputate a teammate's leg, and made countless split-second life and death decisions. He's written countless emails to his family, telling them how much he loves them, just in case those were the last words of his they'd ever read. Outside of the SEALs, he's run meetings in the White House Situation Room, negotiated international arms treaties, and developed high-impact corporate strategies.Over his many years of leadership, he has always strived to be better, to contribute more, and to put others first. That's what makes him an effective leader, and it's the quality that he's identified in all of the great leaders he's encountered. That continual striving to lift those around him has filled Mike's life with meaning and purpose, has made him secure in the knowledge that he brings his best to everything he does, and has made him someone others can rely on.In Never Enough, Mike Hayes recounts dramatic stories and offers battle- and boardroom-tested advice that will motivate readers to do work of value, live lives of purpose, and stretch themselves to reach their highest potential.

Author: Ann Patchett
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063092808
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. "The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." —Publisher's Weekly “Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.