The desperate hours One hospital's fight to save a city on the pandemic's front lines

Drawing on 200 interviews with doctors, nurses, administrators, and maintenance staff in the NewYork-Presbyterian hospital system, journalist Brenner (Apples and Oranges) paints a fascinating and harrowing portrait of the Covid-19 pandemic in New York City. With campuses in four of the city's five boroughs and more than 4,000 beds, NewYork-Presbyterian was critical to slowing the spread of the virus in the U.S. "Had NewYork-Presbyterian crumbled," Brenner writes, "the damage to the nation and the world would have been many times worse than what we did experience." She documents shortages of personal protective equipment, staff, and beds in the early months of the pandemic; deep frustrations with the "policy failures, inconsistencies, and incompetence" of state and federal agencies, which severely limited doctors' ability to test patients for the virus; and anger among staffers, who blamed the system's lack of preparedness on cost-cutting by administrators. Throughout, Brenner draws sharp, sympathetic profiles of doctors like chief of surgery Craig Smith, whose patients "referred to him as 'the Marlboro Man' for his taciturn demeanor and discipline," and vividly captures moments of heartbreak and celebration, including a grandmother's recovery after four months spent on a ventilator. This is a powerful look at life on the front lines of a pandemic. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM Partners (June)

An urgent account of how Covid-19 created nearly insurmountable challenges to a famed hospital system. In a book based on more than 200 interviews conducted over 18 months, Vanity Fair writer at large Brenner creates a tense, stirring picture of the impact of Covid-19 on New York-Presbyterian Hospital's campuses in New York City, Westchester County, and the Hudson Valley. In the first months of the pandemic, the city's "most elite hospital system" faced frustration and uncertainty. Little was known about the disease's cause, treatment, and prognosis; hospitals faced a stunning lack of supplies; doctors and nurses were overwhelmed and grief-stricken by deaths they could not prevent; and they were constantly undermined by decisions at the federal, state, and city levels. The CDC's "antediluvian" structures made the agency unable "to quickly gather, process, and interpret data," and states were forced to compete for supplies. When FEMA sent ventilators, they turned out to be old and broken. By mid-March, the hospital had 90,000 masks on hand, a number it needed each day. In its search for protective gear, the hospital found a "profiteering and counterfeit market" allowed to flourish because of a lack of federal leadership. Tests, when they could be found, were unreliable, but the CDC and the Trump administration refused to authorize the import of reliable tests from outside the U.S. As late as June, with cases in New York City soaring, doctors and nurses were unable to get tests for themselves; even when available, processing them "was chaos." Brenner reveals, as well, the conflicts between staff and "their corporate masters," who punished health providers if they spoke out about the hospital's challenges and failures. The author's probing investigation includes animated profiles of a large cast of characters, creating a palpable sense of trauma, pain, and vulnerability in what one cardiologist characterized as nothing less than war. The casualties, Brenner shows, encompassed far more than the patients who died. A potent cautionary tale for pandemic preparedness. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.