Bad Call: A Summer Job on a New York Ambulance
(Hardback)
Publishing Details
Bad Call: A Summer Job on a New York Ambulance
By (Author) Mike Scardino
Little, Brown & Company
Little, Brown & Company
11th September 2018
United States
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
Memoirs
Sociology: death and dying
616.025092
Physical Properties
Hardback
304
Width 166mm, Height 218mm, Spine 26mm
420g
Description
"A compulsively readable, totally unforgettable memoir that recounts a sensitive college student's experience working on an emergency ambulance in hell, aka New York City." -- James Patterson
In 1967, Mike Scardino was an eighteen year-old pre-med student with a problem - his parents couldn't afford to pay his college tuition. Luckily, Mike's dad hooked him up with a lucrative, albeit unusual, summer job, one he's never forgotten. Bad Call is Mike's visceral, fast-moving, and mordantly funny account of the summers he spent working as an "ambulance attendant" on the mean streets of late 1960s New York, at a time when emergency medicine looked nothing like it does today. Fueled by adrenaline and Sabrett's hot dogs, he crossed third rails to pick up injured trainmen, encountered a woman attacked by rats, attended to victims of a plane crash at JFK airport, was nearly murdered, and got an early and indelible education in the impermanence of life. But his work also afforded moments of rare beauty, hope, and everyday heroism, and it changed the course of Mike's life as well as the way he saw the world. Action-packed, poignant, and rich with details that bring Mike's world to life, Bad Call is a gritty portrait of a bygone era as well as a thrilling tale of one man's coming of age.Reviews
"Bad Call is a compulsively readable, totally unforgettable memoir that recounts a sensitive college student's experience working on an emergency ambulance in hell, aka New York City."--James Patterson
"[A] fresh and powerful debut memoir...From accidental deaths to suicides, Scardino writes with the detail of a crime reporter...Scardino's unsparing memoir offers an empathetic look at human pain and suffering."--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"A laugh-till-you-cry look at 1960s New York through the eyes of an ambulance driver who saw the city at its most vulnerable and bloody. Scardino, who worked in a Queens ambulance for four summers in the 1960s, encountered the grotesque and the ludicrous daily and shares his tales in hilarious and harrowing detail. A fun slice of NY life that is not for the squeamish."--NY Post
"In the late 1960s, Mike Scardino took a summer job on an ambulance crew in New York City, offering him a strange, macabre, and compelling insight into a part of city life seldom seen...Morbid and entertaining: a snapshot of life and death in the big city of a bygone era."--CrimeReads
"This remarkable memoir, a vivid and gruesome record of his experiences...are like a punch in the gut. Even when a patient survives, there is always suffering, which Scardino captures with empathy and outrage."
--National Book Review
Author Bio
Mike Scardino is a native of Elmhurst, Queens. In order to pay for college, he worked on a New York City ambulance as a teenager, which led to his decision not to pursue medicine as a career. Mike eventually found his way into advertising, where his ambulance experience proved to be an unexpectedly useful fit. He is married to the woman he met his third day at college and has three daughters. He currently resides in South Carolina.
