The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness

Jerome Groopman

Dec 2003 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Jerome Groopman

About this audiobook

An inspiring and profoundly enlightening exploration of one doctor’s discovery of how hope can change
the course of illness

Since the time of the ancient Greeks, human beings have believed that hope is essential to life. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Harvard Medical School professor and New Yorker staff writer Jerome Groopman shows us why.

The search for hope is most urgent at the patient’s bedside. The Anatomy of Hope takes us there, bringing us into the lives of people at pivotal moments when they reach for and find hope--or when it eludes their grasp. Through these intimate portraits, we learn how to distinguish true hope from false, why some people feel they are undeserving of it, and whether we should ever abandon our search.

Can hope contribute to recovery by changing physical well-being? To answer this hotly debated question, Groopman embarked on an investigative journey to cutting-edge laboratories where researchers are unraveling an authentic biology of hope. There he finds a scientific basis for understanding the role of this vital emotion in the outcome of illness.

Here is a book that offers a new way of thinking about hope, with a message for all readers, not only patients and their families. "We are just beginning to appreciate hope’s reach," Groopman writes, "and have not defined its limits. I see hope as the very heart of healing."

About the author

Jerome Groopman, M.D., holds the Dina and Raphael Recanati Chair of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and is the chief of experimental medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. His research has focused on the basic mechanisms of blood disease, cancer, and AIDS. He is a staff writer in medicine and biology for The New Yorker and is the author of two popular books, The Measure of Our Days and Second Opinions, which were the inspiration for the television series Gideon’s Crossing. In 2000 he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He lives with his wife and three children in Brookline, Massachusetts.