Login
Register
Home || Search || About us || Blog || Contact us || Other book sites

Name: A Thousand Naked Strangers

Full title: A Thousand Naked Strangers: A Paramedic's Wild Ride to the Edge and Back
Author: Kevin Hazzard
Rank:

Rating:

Original Rating:

Popularity: 2.3
Genres/categories: Memoirs, Non Fiction, Humor, Health

Purchase/research links:
A former paramedic's visceral, poignant, and mordantly funny account of a decade spent on Atlanta's mean streets saving lives and connecting with the drama and occasional beauty that lies inside catastrophe.

In the aftermath of 9/11 Kevin Hazzard felt that something was missing from his life--his days were too safe, too routine. A failed salesman turned local reporter, he wanted to test himself, see how he might respond to pressure and danger. He signed up for emergency medical training and became, at age twenty-six, a newly minted EMT running calls in the worst sections of Atlanta. His life entered a different realm--one of blood, violence, and amazing grace.

Thoroughly intimidated at first and frequently terrified, he experienced on a nightly basis the adrenaline rush of walking into chaos. But in his downtime, Kevin reflected on how people's facades drop away when catastrophe strikes. As his hours on the job piled up, he realized he was beginning to see into the truth of things. There is no pretense five beats into a chest compression, or in an alley next to a crack den, or on a dimly lit highway where cars have collided. Eventually, what had at first seemed impossible happened: Kevin acquired mastery. And in the process he was able to discern the professional differences between his freewheeling peers, what marked each--as he termed them--as "a tourist," "true believer," or "killer."

Combining indelible scenes that remind us of life's fragile beauty with laugh-out-loud moments that keep us smiling through the worst, A Thousand Naked Strangers is an absorbing read about one man's journey of self-discovery--a trip that also teaches us about ourselves.
Similar books:

MWF Seeking BFF
by Rachel Bertsche

The Big Tiny
by Dee Williams

Down the Rabbit Hole
by Holly Madison

Once More We Saw Stars
by Jayson Greene

Inside Out
by Demi Moore

Girl Logic
by Iliza Shlesinger

Toil & Trouble
by Augusten Burroughs

The Camera My Mother Gave Me
by Susanna Kaysen

Naturally Tan
by Tan France

Ghost Boy
by Martin Pistorius

Year of Yes
by Shonda Rhimes

Paddle Your Own Canoe
by Nick Offerman

Not Quite What I Was Planning
by Rachel Fershleiser

The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border
by Francisco Cantu

Down Among the Dead Men
by Michelle Williams

Thin Is the New Happy
by Valerie Frankel

I Had Brain Surgery, What's Your Excuse?
by Suzy Becker

Kitchen Confidential
by Anthony Bourdain

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
by Barbara Kingsolver

Dry
by Augusten Burroughs