The Book Prize Index

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

Sheri Fink

Physician and reporter Sheri Fink reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and to maintain life amid chaos. After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed and the heat climbed. Exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths. Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting, unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing the reader into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing.

Medicine & Public HealthMedicine & Public Health · medium confidenceMedicine & Public Health81 signalsLlm Classifier: Medicine & Public Health -> Medicine & Public HealthKeyword Classifier: Medicine & Public Health -> Medicine & Public HealthTopic Classifier: Medicine, Health & the Body -> Medicine & Public HealthMedicine, Health & the BodyMental Health & PsychologyDrugs, Addiction & Treatment

Award History

5 wins · 6 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current InterestMajor2013WinnerSecondary source
National Book Critics Circle Award for NonfictionMajor2013WinnerSecondary source
PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction2015WinnerSecondary source
J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize2014WinnerSecondary source
Ridenhour Book Prize2014WinnerSecondary source
Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionMajor2014FinalistSecondary source
View all award history (6)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  2. 02 Central places

    • Memorial Medical Center78%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

    This suggestion did not meet the normal display threshold and is more likely to be wrong.

    After Katrina, Memorial Medical Center lost power, and exhausted caregivers designated certain patients last for rescue; later allegations claim some staff injected patients with drugs to hasten deaths.

    Model confidence 58%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    35 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 70%.