The two books reviewed were published in 2013. The first book, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink, was one of The New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books for 2013. The second book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, was a national bestseller.

The first book is Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink. It has 558 pages, costs U.S.$27, and was published by Crown Publishers, New York, 2013. The author earned her MD and PhD degrees from Stanford University. She wrote a previous book War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival about medical professionals under siege during the genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Fink's brief biography indicates that she is a former relief worker in disaster and conflict zones. Her background is such that I think she was an excellent person to write this compelling and disturbing book. This book recounts what occurred during and after Hurricane Katrina at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans. The "five days" referenced are August 27 to September 1, 2005, which are detailed in Part 1: Deadly Choices. Part 2 of the book is aptly named, Reckoning.

Five Days at Memorial recounts the events that happened based on more than 500 interviews. Fink also used information gleaned from news reports, documents, e-mails, weather reports, architectural plans, electrical diagrams, and reports prepared in the course of civil litigation. She visited the hospital and other sites depicted in the book. Fink includes 49 pages of notes with 484 individual notations and names of those interviewed for each chapter as well as an index. The level of description and attention to details is extensive.

Part 1: Deadly Choices describes what occurred just before and during Katrina in such vivid detail that the reader may need to stop reading for a period of time to relieve the emotional impact experienced as you relive the events and decisions and helpless and hopeless feelings described. I had this need on a regular basis and learned that others also felt this same need to distance themselves from the emotion of the situation.

Part 1 begins as Hurricane Katrina is forecast to be a Category 5 storm and calls for people to evacuate were issued. The reader is placed in Memorial with the patients, staff, and family members and pets who were there to "ride out the hurricane" as was commonly done for previous hurricanes. Many patients were evacuated prior to Katrina hitting the New Orleans area, but a small number of patients and the nurses and physicians caring for these patients were not evacuated. How and why decisions were made or not made are detailed. The situation as it unfolded was chaotic with minimal preplanning for the disaster. As a reader, you are swept into the calls to the corporation owning Memorial, and local and state authorities for help to evacuate. Many times I was disturbed by the lack of response to calls for help and the subsequent cascading decisions that were made. No one action led to the disaster that unfolded but as you learn of the discussions and decisions that followed, you can see the movement toward a disastrous outcome ... just the opposite of what the people involved were working to achieve. The result was the designation by exhausted caregivers of certain patients as last for rescue. The perceived inability to rescue these patients and the caregivers' stated desire to relieve suffering resulted in several doctors and nurses facing criminal charges of euthanizing numerous patients by injecting drugs to hasten their death.

In Part 2: Reckoning is just as it sounds. As news reports of what happened and who were involved began to surface, questions were raised by family members and those whose responsibility it was to protect the lives of disabled and elderly hospital patients and nursing-home residents. Fink presents how the investigation unfolded and who was involved. Detailed information from the various investigations is provided. Fink provides information from all sides of the story, the surviving relatives, the nurses and doctors, and administrators as well as the investigators and officials such as the coroner who were charged to determine what happened. Hospital disaster policies and backup systems were scrutinized. Fink provides a comprehensive picture of the chaos and lack of real disaster planning on the part of all involved. No entity is unscathed.

As hard as this book was for me to read, I think it has great value. I think that all healthcare providers believe they know how they would act in a disaster but this book has made me look at myself and what I would do in a situation such as resulted from Hurricane Katrina as honestly as I am able. I think all nurses and doctors should read this book to learn from it and thoughtfully consider what actions they would take if ever in such a chaotic situation. I think every administrator responsible for providing the supports needed in a disaster should read this book to better understand their responsibility to patient and staff in an emergency. I think all members of disaster preparedness teams or committees should read this book since this book details that disaster planning is not something to do for the regulatory bodies but to save lives. I highly recommend this book.

The second book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg, was published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, in 2013, has 228 pages, and costs U.S.$24.95. This book also has extensive notes for each chapter and an index. Sandberg's message is that more women should hold leadership positions in government and industry. Sandberg is the chief operating officer of Facebook and is ranked by Fortune magazine as one of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business and as Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Her premise is that women can do whatever a man can do as a leader; women just need to seek and be given the opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities. She traces the progress, or lack thereof, of women achieving leadership positions. She examines why women's progress has stalled, presents the root causes as viewed through data, and offers solutions that women can implement. Her writing style is very engaging. She uses many personal stories to illustrate her points as well as pulling stories from her large network of women who also run major corporations.

The introduction discusses "internalizing the revolution," or why have women not continued the progress made by earlier generations of women toward a more equal world where men and women truly are partners. As Sandberg states, "A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes" (p. 7).

The book has 11 chapters with intriguing titles that made me what to find out what she had to say. Chapter 1 starts with the question, What would you do if you weren't afraid? Chapter 2, titled "Sit at the Table," looks at internal barriers women have that alter a woman's behavior. Sandberg discusses how women underestimate what they have to offer versus men who tend to overestimate their offerings. Chapter 3 begins with the results of a study to test perceptions of men and women in the workplace. It was a case study about a real-life female entrepreneur named Heidi Roizen. Two groups of students at Columbia Business School read the same story with one difference. Half of the students read about Heidi and half read about Howard. The difference in gender of the entrepreneur leads to very different perception of the success of the person. In Chapter 4, the visual of "It's a Jungle Gym, Not a Ladder" is introduced and discussed resulting a different way to think of success. Chapters 6 and 8 focus on communication at work and at home, and how without ongoing communication, it is difficult to be successful. Chapter 9 is a must-read from my perspective. "The Myth of Doing It All" is a playoff the slogan of the 1960s and 1970s that women can "have it all." Sandberg discusses how each woman needs to approach this idea from their perspective. The last two chapters are "Let's Start Talking About It" and "Working Together Toward Equality." Sandberg concludes the book with inviting women to keep talking by joining the discussion at the Lean In Community at http://www.facebook.com/leaninorg or http://www.leanin.org. I would recommend this book. I read it as part of a mentoring program (see what Sandberg says about that in Chapter 5). Although the premise is not unique, Sandberg does provide data to support her ideas and has an engaging way of writing that makes the content interesting to the reader.

Both books are valuable although in different ways and for different reasons. I recommend Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead and highly recommend Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital.