Superb, informal cultural anthropology--eye-opening, readable, utterly engaging. Carole Horn, The Washington Post Book World This is a book that should be deeply disturbing to anyone who has given so much as a moment's thought to the state of American medicine. But it is much more . . . People are presented as [Fadiman] saw them, in their humility and their frailty--and their nobility. Sherwin B. Nuland, The New Republic The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down changed how doctors see themselves and how they see their patients. Anne Fadiman celebrates the complexity and the individuality of the human interactions that make up the practice of medicine while simultaneously pointing out directions for change and breaking readers' hearts with the tragedies of cultural displacement, medical limitations, and futile good intentions. Perri Klass, M.D., author of A Not Entirely Benign Procedure"

Anne Fadiman was born in New York City and was raised in Connecticut and Los Angeles. After graduating from Harvard, she worked as a wilderness instructor in Wyoming before returning to New York to write. She has been a staff writer at "Life," editor-at-large of "Civilization," and editor of "The American Scholar." Fadiman is also the author of "Ex Libris "and "At Large and At Small," and the editor of "Rereadings." She now lives with her family in western Massachusetts and serves as the Francis Writerin-Residence at Yale.