SECOND OPINION: A Doctor's Dispatches From The Inner City
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| |||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £2.65
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Second Opinion for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £2.65, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Drug addicts and desperate drunks, battered wives and suicidal burglars, elderly Alzheimer's sufferers and teenage stabbing victims. They all pass through Theodore Dalrymple's surgery, and he uses the experience of treating them to examine life for those unfortunate enough to live at the bottom end of society. He writes with a combination of dry humour, compassion and, occasionally, anger - mostly at the inhuman bureaucracy of the system, which works against the doctors and nurses as they try to help their patients.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a collection of very short Spectator columns that roughly follows on from where his previous book "If Symptoms Still Persist" left off (which in turn was a follow-on from "If Symptoms Persist"). It is roughly twice as long each of those books and, according to a page inside the book, covers the time period from 1997 to 2009 (the previous books covered the mid-1990s).
The stories mostly come from his time working as a doctor and are witty, darkly funny, and well-written. Since they are short pieces, they don't quite have the cultural depth and longer arcs that his longer essays have, but they are still very enjoyable to read. But, it is clearly of a different character than his collections of longer essays like "Not With A Bang But A Whimper" and "Our Culture: What's Left Of It".
Sadly, they don't have the accompanying illustrations by Nick Newman that the other two books had. But, this is only a minor shortcoming because the writing is at the very least equally as good.
The stories mostly come from his time working as a doctor and are witty, darkly funny, and well-written. Since they are short pieces, they don't quite have the cultural depth and longer arcs that his longer essays have, but they are still very enjoyable to read. But, it is clearly of a different character than his collections of longer essays like "Not With A Bang But A Whimper" and "Our Culture: What's Left Of It".
Sadly, they don't have the accompanying illustrations by Nick Newman that the other two books had. But, this is only a minor shortcoming because the writing is at the very least equally as good.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
At the end of the day I look forward to sitting in my armchair with my feet up on the ottoman, pouring myself a stiff Diet Pepsi, and inhaling several pages of Dalrymple at his driest. Second Opinion, imported from England, is chock-full of amusing tales of life among the savages. I know what you'll say - Dalrymple lacks compassion! And that's what makes him so delectable, so - so transgressive! In this era where we censor ourselves before thinking, Dalrymple dares to announce what we know is true but dare not say publicly or privately. His experience working in British prisons has given him a wealth of anecdote, but his genius is in the telling. Briticisms abound. I constantly flew to the Oxford English Dictionary to translate his language to American. (I learned that supererogatory does not mean unnecessary, as I had believed, but excess. That "instantiation" is not related to "instantaneous".) There were many phrases that were so Brit that I have no idea what they mean. Nonetheless, I got the gist and enjoyed the process. Second Opinion is superbly amusing and goes down painlessly, especially taken with a double dose of Schadenfreude. I want to add that the book contains unexpected grace notes of wisdom, observations about finding meaning in life, as well as the sudden leap of empathy toward the rare patient who embodies a quiet heroism. His encounter with the young man who speaks of Othello with recognition and applies it to his own jealousy is poignant.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
The book is a collection of short essays about the author's experience as an inner city and prison doctor. I found them interesting though they are better read a few at a time. The book paints an almost completely hopeless picture of life at the bottom of the heap. Men and women beat each other up because of real or perceived insults or injuries. They all, without exception, appear to lack the finer qualities of human nature.
Prisoners vow to go straight but never really achieve their aim. People try and commit suicide because someone is nasty to them. Men walk out on their children and women have children by many different fathers. Yes he is judging people by his own standards which some people may find distasteful but occasionally a small dose of judging other people and finding them wanting makes a refreshing change in this non-judgemental era.
I finished the book feeling there is no hope for the majority of inner city dwellers but then I thought about the flashes of humour and the occasional insights displayed by some of the author's patients. The author offers no solutions to the many problems he encounters and to my mind throwing money at the situation would not help. The book made me realise that we actually need to censure people if they commit crimes and we are doing them no favours if we explain and excuse their behaviour. Everyone needs to develop a sense of personal responsibility. Life at the bottom is tough but it need not be as tough as some people make it.
Prisoners vow to go straight but never really achieve their aim. People try and commit suicide because someone is nasty to them. Men walk out on their children and women have children by many different fathers. Yes he is judging people by his own standards which some people may find distasteful but occasionally a small dose of judging other people and finding them wanting makes a refreshing change in this non-judgemental era.
I finished the book feeling there is no hope for the majority of inner city dwellers but then I thought about the flashes of humour and the occasional insights displayed by some of the author's patients. The author offers no solutions to the many problems he encounters and to my mind throwing money at the situation would not help. The book made me realise that we actually need to censure people if they commit crimes and we are doing them no favours if we explain and excuse their behaviour. Everyone needs to develop a sense of personal responsibility. Life at the bottom is tough but it need not be as tough as some people make it.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A wry and cynical observation on one way the state wastes your taxes.
Entertainingly describes the faceless bureaucracy and absurdities of the welfare state. Worth a read to anyone who doubts why we need to perform radical surgery on the system.
Published 10 months ago by Shupi
Humour & Hell
If you want to know what happens when medicine meets the underclass, read this book.
Theodore Dalrymple is erudite, sophisticated, witty and, I suspect, a very good... Read more
Theodore Dalrymple is erudite, sophisticated, witty and, I suspect, a very good... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Rudiroo
New Machiavelli.
Dr. Dalrymple catalogues the frailties of human nature encountered in his experience as a doctor. These first hand accounts of the inherent viciousness and brutality of human... Read more
Published 20 months ago by Invisible Man
A desk companion
As usual from Dalrymple a well written book, but this time in the form of a collection of short anecdotes (1-2 pages). Read more
Published 20 months ago by Mr. B. M. Fisher
Funny, witty language, although it's quite pessimistic
I found this book very amusing, entertaining but also thought-provoking. It should be mandatory reading for policymakers in the area of justice, crime and social policy. Read more
Published on 20 Jan 2010 by Pekka J. Taipale
great read
An excellent read for those fed up of a pc, red tape world gone mad... IF you like a good rant, you will like this book!
Published on 22 Dec 2009 by Ms. Monsoon
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
