Telltale Hearts

For over three decades, Dr. Dean-David Schillinger has served in one of the country’s busiest and most important public hospitals. A public health leader and primary care physician for underserved patients, Schillinger learned that high-tech tests and novel medications are often not enough to save lives. Rather, accurate diagnosis, treatment and true healing come from listening deeply to patients and their stories. 

In Telltale Hearts, Schillinger reveals what is lost when patients’ stories are ignored or overlooked, and how much is gained when these stories are actively elicited. The stories themselves, at times shocking and always revelatory, disclose secrets, prompt awe, forge unexpected connections, and even catalyze public health action.

Telltale Hearts serves as a call to action, urging us to reshape public policy to improve the nation’s health.

• “Telltale Hearts is about a burgeoning area of medical research: the ways in which socioeconomic factors like poverty, racism and marginalization — and associated ills like food deserts, housing insecurity and exposure to pollution and violence — shape the health of many Americans, as well as society’s obligation to do better.”
   
  The New York Times
• “With this remarkable work, woven from strands of memoir, reportage, prophecy, and stinging indictment, shot through with bright threads of humor and tenderness, and beautifully written, Dean-David Schillinger brings clarity, curiosity, patience, understanding, and an undeniable literary gift to bear on the practice of medicine in this inhumane age.”
   
  Michael Chabon, author of Moonglow
• “Telltale Hearts digs deep into the humanity of patients and caregivers alike, revealing the indispensable connection between medicine and storytelling. Timely and telling!”
   
  Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD, editor in Chief, Bellevue Literary Review, and author of What Doctors Feel
• “Schillinger, a master clinician, uses powerful stories to bring the reader face-to-face with the root causes of the nation’s most pressing health problems and the imperative to enact desperately needed changes in health policy and public health. A compelling, beautifully written must-read for all of us who have a personal stake in improving our health and the health of our communities.”
   
  Ronald Epstein, MD, author of Attending
• "A humble and honest, heroic and heartrending account of humanistic medicine."
  Booklist (starred)