Wow. I am really amazed at how good this is! I really have to hand it to this author---she "gets" it. I was so afraid this would wing off into nurse-sex-life territory or nurses-are-terrible territory or all-nurses-are-perfect territory, but this author seems to have managed to really achieve an understanding of the very real world of nurses, the good and the bad. She even gets hospital humor! LOL I am not, myself, a nurse, although I grew up certain I would be one, started candy-striping at 14, working as a CNA at 16. It ended up not being the right path for me--I wanted so to be like my mom, though. My mom is an extraordinary nurse, now retired, and she even spent years in an ER as a nurse and head nurse, although a much smaller ER than those in the book. I can say I never experienced "eating your young" but that was mostly because everyone I encountered in my local hospital and nursing home respected my mom so much and treated me well by some kind of "halo" effect. LOL And everyone had good things to say about my mom. (I must confess I did occasionally see some cattiness towards others but never at me.) I almost feel like I got to revisit a special world from my youth that I no longer get to see. Hospital TV shows are just wrong. LOL Reading this is a great way to celebrate the women (and men) who choose this career. And I have to say after reading this book---I'm going to start asking. And if I EVER find a hospital that charges its nurses for parking, uniforms and half-and-half, and not the rest of the staff---I'M CHOOSING ANOTHER HOSPITAL. That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.