The House of God

Samuel Shem

Sept 2010 · Sold by Penguin

About this eBook

By turns heartbreaking, hilarious, and utterly human, The House of God is a mesmerizing and provocative novel about what it really takes to become a doctor.

“The raunchy, troubling, and hilarious novel that turned into a cult phenomenon.  Singularly compelling…brutally honest.”—The New York Times

Struggling with grueling hours and sudden life-and-death responsibilities, Basch and his colleagues, under the leadership of their rule-breaking senior resident known only as the Fat Man, must learn not only how to be fine doctors but, eventually, good human beings. 

A phenomenon ever since it was published, The House of God was the first unvarnished, unglorified, and uncensored portrait of what training to become a doctor is truly like, in all its terror, exhaustion and black comedy. With more than two million copies sold worldwide, it has been hailed as one of the most important medical novels ever written.

With an introduction by John Updike 

Ratings and reviews

This should be required reading for all med students and nurses. Although outdated, it still makes sense even to this day. Especially how E.R. doctors poke fun at ridiculous medical complaints. As an emergency nurse, trust me, this still happens. We use the term "gomer" all the time even to this day. Medical staff are laughing behind your back if you come in with a ridiculous complaint, such as "back pain for a year."

A must read but always with a grain of salt. For New medical students this book has the power to make you lose faith in a system when you should be focused on how to make it the best way you can. Let this be a guide to what goes wrong when people forget who we are treating, ourselves or the patients.

read this book way back when I was a new RN working in CCU. A lot of us read it and talked about it. Funny, heartbreaking, sad, and sometimes too real. Now that I am "lol in nad" I may read it again would be the 5th time. Not for the faint of heart, but a good read anyway.

About the author

Samuel Shem is a novelist, playwright, and, for three decades, a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty. His novels include The House of God, Mount Misery, and Fine. He is coauthor with his wife, Janet Surrey, of the hit Off-Broadway play Bill W. and Dr. Bob, the story of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous (winner of the 2007 Performing Arts Award of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence), and We Have to Talk: Healing Dialogues Between Men and Women.