The Death Gap

How Inequality Kills

By: David A. Ansell

Narrated by: Peter Berkrot

Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

The poor die sooner. Blacks die sooner. And poor urban Blacks die sooner than almost all other Americans. David Ansell has spent nearly four decades as a doctor at hospitals serving some of the poorest communities in Chicago, and has witnessed firsthand the lives behind these devastating statistics.

In The Death Gap, he gives a grim survey of these realities, drawn from observations and stories of his patients. While the contrasts and disparities among Chicago's communities are particularly stark, the death gap is truly a nationwide epidemic - as Ansell shows, there is a 35-year difference in life expectancy between the healthiest and wealthiest and the poorest and sickest American neighborhoods.

If you are poor, where you live in America can dictate when you die. It doesn't need to be this way; such divisions are not inevitable. Ansell calls out the social and cultural arguments that have been raised as ways of explaining or excusing these gaps, and he lays bare the structural violence that is really to blame.

The Death Gap outlines a vision that will provide the foundation for a healthier nation - for all.

©2017 David A. Ansell (P)2017 Tantor

Critic reviews

"This moving study delivers the harsh truth about the ways that racism infects our nation's health care system, and it does so with passion and eloquence. One comes away from Death Gap feeling inspired to act, and that's a rare and wonderful accomplishment." (Beryl Satter, author of Family Properties )

Exceptional,

I found this title and narrative,author tobe exceptionally dedicated to the profession!and practices of pharmaceutical skill and somewhat homeopathic with regard to patient clients relation an economical condition and environmental substandard human right in an 20,21 centry clarity even with regard to jurisprudence and its many bias with due processes and diligence found myself applauding the advocacy which seemed too profess heath care for all an human dignity and right .

my eyes and heart are open...thank you book!

dang dang dang....eye opening, TRUTH speaking book! as a healthcare worker....I will know be able to understand some of my patients even more. highly recommend!

Data-driven explanation for structural inequality

To understand healthcare, read this. Excellent, unbiased, unparalleled, critical information with context from 3 vastly different Chicago hospitals - that should be used to inform all healthcare policy and legislation. Book's narrator must not be Chicago native, mispronounced some words including local places: Tuskegee (experiment), Stroger (hospital), antibiotics and Roseland (community). Tone didn't always match message.

Important book, ruined by narrator's voice

This is an important book and needs to be heard, but not with this narrator. His obnoxious voice is so irritating and snide it completely ruins the message of the book. Please redo with a new narrator!

Good topic

I enjoyed the topic, but the narrator detracted from the book, in my opinion. I would recommend it for the topic alone, though.

Good book, bad narration

This is an informative book that shows how attitudes about race affect health outcomes. But most importantly, it does a wonderful job of connecting housing, geography and segregation to health inequality, termed the Death Gap here.

While the book starts off a little clunky, I suspect part of this is the author presenting large ideas, I think some of this is also on account of the author’s familiarity with topics outside of health (understandable, author is a doctor). However, the biggest issue with this book is the choice of narrator. I checked the narrator’s, which includes Unsolved Mysteries. There’s a certain sense of condescension in his voice. Listening to the audiobook, you get sense that the author looks down on his audience, but it really seems that this perception is caused by the narrator reading the book like a murder mystery. Whenever he pronounces “death gap” or “black” it always comes across with a tone of righteous anger, that is a pure turnoff.

Nonetheless, the content of this book is good and everyone should read it, it makes one of the strongest cases for healthcare as a right, which is becoming a stronger rallying cry as 2020 approaches.