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In 2003, in the face of errors and accidents caused by medical and surgical trainees, the American Council of Graduate Medical Education mandated a reduction in resident work hours to eighty per week. Over the course of two and a half years spent observing residents and staff surgeons trying to implement this new regulation, Katherine C. Kellogg discovered that resistance to it was both strong and successful—in fact, two of the three hospitals she studied failed to make the change. Challenging Operations takes up the apparent paradox of medical professionals resisting reforms designed to help them and their patients. Through vivid anecdotes, interviews, and incisive observation and analysis, Kellogg shows the complex ways that institutional reforms spark resistance when they challenge long-standing beliefs, roles, and systems of authority.

At a time when numerous policies have been enacted to address the nation’s soaring medical costs, uneven access to care, and shortage of primary-care physicians, Challenging Operations sheds new light on the difficulty of implementing reforms and offers concrete recommendations for effectively meeting that challenge.

This book analyzes narratives of hospitality (and inhospitality) through recent crises like climate change and mass displacement. 

Current historical and political issues, such as the refugee crisis and climate emergency, are deeply intertwined with notions, images, and narratives of (in)hospitality. Departing from seminal works, such as those by Kant and Derrida, on this topic, the chapters in this volume examine how new postcolonial, gender, environmental, and medical perspectives reshape current approaches to hospitality in literature, culture, and the arts.

Through a comparison of case studies in multiple national settings, Hosts, Hospitals and Hospitalities shows how the concept of hospitality shapes the way in which we relate with “the Other” in diverse—and ever-evolving—cultural, political, social, and environmental contexts. By examining the issue of hospitality from a post-pandemic standpoint, which revised the roles of our private and public spaces in the aftermath of COVID-19, by dwelling on novel issues of climate emergency, and by focusing on current developments in terms of migration and displacement, this book adds new light and significant theoretical and methodological perspectives to previous debates about hospitality.

Nathan Straus (1848–1931) encompassed worlds. He rose from his Jewish German immigrant family’s ruin in Civil War Georgia to become co-owner of Macy’s and Abraham & Straus department stores. He helped build American Zionism and cofounded the American Jewish Congress movement. His public service led to a nomination for New York City mayor. 

This, the first comprehensive biography of Straus, details each of these lives but argues that his most historic achievements lay elsewhere—in philanthropy. Inspired by both his Jewish values and no-nonsense pragmatism, Straus designed, funded, and oversaw four Progressive philanthropic initiatives. The greatest—his demonstration and advocacy campaigns for milk pasteurization—saved the lives of countless thousands of infants in New York City and, ultimately, across much of America and western Europe. Straus also founded America’s first TB preventorium for at-risk children: a model for the forty-five more that followed. Partnering with Hadassah, he brought American public health innovations to Mandate Palestine. He provided vast relief for New York City’s jobless in the severe 1890s depression. In all, Straus’s humanitarianism won the acclaim of American presidents and world leaders and the gratitude of millions. We can learn from him today.