This autobiographical novella was written in 1980 by one of China's leading dissidents, who was released from jail in late October 1990 again after being imprisoned as a pro-democracy activist in the wake of the Tiananmen incident of spring 1989. Wang recounts three episodes of extreme hardship in his life: incarceration in a Guomindang jail during the 1930s for his communist activism, on the run from Japanese troops during the 1940s in a bleak part of Shandong Province, and imprisonment as a "rightist" in Shanghai during the 1960s cultural revolution. The central theme of the three stories is extreme deprivation and "Hunger".

This autobiographical novella was written in 1980 by one of China's leading dissidents, who was released from jail in late October 1990 again after being imprisoned as a pro-democracy activist in the wake of the Tiananmen incident of spring 1989. Wang recounts three episodes of extreme hardship in his life: incarceration in a Guomindang jail during the 1930s for his communist activism, on the run from Japanese troops during the 1940s in a bleak part of Shandong Province, and imprisonment as a "rightist" in Shanghai during the 1960s cultural revolution. The central theme of the three stories is extreme deprivation and "Hunger".

This anthology brings together the personal stories of patients, physicians, policy makers, and others whose writings humanize discussions and deliberations about health policy.

Drawn from the popular "Narrative Matters" column in the journal Health Affairs, the essays epitomize the policy narrative, a new genre of writing that explores health policy through the expression of personal experiences. Forty-six articles focus on such topics as the hard financial realities of medical insurance, AIDS, assisted suicide, marketing drugs, genetic engineering, organ transplants, and ethnic and racial disparities in the health care system. The narratives raise ethical and moral issues that are being studied in many of our nation's medical schools.

This compelling collection provides important insight into the human dimensions of health care and health policy.