The Official Website of Samuel Shem

“Any doctor I know read House of God and was transformed by it. It was an honest, raw and unapologetic journey into the world of a hospital internship. It was like being let in on the secret handshake and all the rituals that accompany it. Best of all, the narrator and author deftly pulled on all our emotions, including humor and anxiety, to spin out a universal human drama that has stuck with me decades later. With Man’s 4th Best hospital, Dr Sam Shem has done it again. This time all of us–doctors and patients alike–are along for the ride into the entire universe of medicine, which is at once both wonderful and ludicrous. The story of doctors, overwhelmed by long noxious hours in front of billing computers called Electronic Health Records, trying to treat patients humanely even as the hospital is more interested in treating the bottom line, feels so timely and relevant. You will get a little pissed off, double over in laughter and even cry a little. If you read one medical drama, make it this one.”
Sanjay Gupta, M.D.
Associate Professor of Neurosurgery, The Emory Clinic
Chief Medical Correspondent, CNN

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The story of two mothers and a father in love with the same daughter, Samuel Shem’s At the Heart of the Universe is an epic novel set deep in rural China against the backdrop of an ancient mountain monastery during the time of the one-child-per-family policy. Inspired by the author’s experiences as parent of an adopted child, it describes the drama of adoption and the journey of loss and rebirth that can happen when a daughter brings together her adopted mother and father with her birth mother high on a mountaintop.

Set in 1991 in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, as a Chinese woman abandons her one-month-old daughter in a pile of celery in a busy market, and then shifting to Changsha ten years later as the daughter returns with her adopted American parents, the story moves across southern China until, high atop Emei San, one of China’s “sacred mountains” with a Buddhist temple, the four are brought together in the wilderness—a perilous and explosive time that unleashes their heartbreak and suffering and, remarkably, transcends it to shared compassion, and new beginnings.

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It is said that The Buddha, on the morning of his only child’s birth, left his wife and son to “go forth” to seek enlightenment, without saying goodbye. What do we know of his wife Yasodhara and his son Rahula?

The Buddha’s Wife brings this rarely told story of Yasodhara—”She who stays”—and her community, to the forefront, offering a spiritual parable and portrait of these compelling and compassionate characters. The Readers Companion offers practical applications of their discoveries and teachings for our modern lives.

Princess Yasodhara’s journey is one of loss, grief, suffering. and the growth of wisdom and compassion. Through it, she experiencees her own awakening within the deep bonds of community and “ordinary” relationships. While traditional Buddhism emphasizes solitary, silent meditation, even in the presence of others, Yasodhara’s experiences point to the Path of Right Relation, of opening and cultivating insight and compassion in community. Awakening not alone, but together with others.

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“Bawdy, blistering… This is Catch 22 with stethescopes.” -Cosmopolitan

The outrageously funny, bitingly brilliant novel of Dr.
Basch’s training to be a doctor in a hospital called ‘The House of God.’ The
story of survival, heartache, love, death and sex–a novel called “an
American classic,” “one of the two most significant American medical novels
of the 20th century,” “The book to read about becoming a doctor,”
“Rabelaisian,” and “a small masterpiece.”

Read the new introduction by John Updike!

“Funny…Full of dazzling, zany intelligence…energetic and exuberant.” – New York Times

The story of Dr. Fine, a young man learning to be the complete psychiatrist: doing scientific research on memory (teaching grasshoppers to lift their legs and eat calcium pills), becoming a psychoanalyst, caught up in a mystery involving a killer patient, and, above all, trying to find the answer to two questions: “What is love?” and “How do people change?”–“Exhilarating, a glittering gemstone, dazzling,” “full of dazzling, zany intelligence,” “a story filled with metaphysical overtones,” “a rolicking journey of self-discovery and love.”