The Crisis of US Hospice Care

"A highly original book with the potential to influence various aspects of end-of-life scholarship and discourse. Braswell plants seeds for a new vision of the US family structure, social life, policy, and governance that would ease the burden on dying persons and their loved ones. Excellently written and approachable."

"Lucid and engaging. Combining stories with analysis, Braswell draws readers in, helping them see the human significance of the question at stake. A constructive appraisal of hospice's genealogy that highlights its vulnerabilities and celebrates its strengths, this beautifully written, intellectually challenging book will be of interest to a wide array of people."

"In this extremely ambitious book, Harold Braswell, an important scholar in bioethics, leverages unique expertise and approaches drawn from disability studies, the history of medicine, social work, and ethnography into a cohesive whole. This truly interdisciplinary volume is an impressive achievement by an impressive scholar, and I have no hesitation in enthusiastically recommending it."

"Drawing on extensive research in various fields as well as his own ethnographic study, Harold Braswell demonstrates that the US hospice system cannot continue to depend on family caregivers and points to a path for reform. The Crisis of US Hospice Care is essential reading not only for health professionals, policymakers, and academics but for all of us, because we and our families inevitably will confront the issues Braswell raises."

"The United States, with few exceptions, either pushes death to the corners of nursing homes and hospitals or heaps an impossible burden onto families and their homes. Braswell, rather than slouching toward assisted suicide, deftly articulates the cultural and structural changes required to give the dying and their families a nonviolent and freedom-giving alternative."

"The pressure on families at end of life, which makes many feel inadequate as caregivers and some to be that way, is well described by Braswell in his quest to strengthen hospice in America. You don't have to agree with the author's emphasis on freedom to recognize that he has written a useful book with an important political message: families need more state support to assist them in providing care for dying loved ones."

"With this elegant and deeply ethical guide on navigating the tasks of dying, Harold Braswell offers us a bracing ethnographic meditation on how love and work intertwine in end-of-life care. Focusing on the potential of hospice care, Braswell gathers personal, familial, and communal considerations into a set of policy recommendations that can guide how we manage the current demographic challenges of dying here and now."

"The Crisis of US Hospice Care is an honest look at the current problems with hospice care in the United States... [Braswell] has opened a door into the real challenges we face in achieving a society. For as Mahatma Gandhi cautioned us, a society's true measure can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members."