Tuesday, Mar 10, 2020 7:00 PM

Location:
In the basement.
2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley

Website

Author Susan Levenstein talks about Dotteressa: An American Doctor in Rome.

Susan Levenstein has been practicing primary care internal medicine in Italy for four decades, treating an international clientele that’s featured ambassadors and auto mechanics, millionaires and maids, poets and priests. She is a graduate of Harvard University and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

"While sharing the many difficulties she’s faced as an outsider to the Italian health-care system―with its piles of paperwork, unwritten rules, and old boy networks―Levenstein also writes a love letter to Italy . . . The first chapters recount, with a combination of exasperation and humor, the years-long obstacle course she encountered in her quest to practice medicine in the country. She proceeds to talk about everything from what a well-dressed Italian physician should wear, to, in a particularly wise and witty chapter, love and sex from both an Italian and an American perspective. A timely epilogue discusses the Affordable Care Act from her unique position as an American expat and an Italian physician, with Levenstein reflecting on how Italians, despite widespread dissatisfaction with their own health system, manage to live more healthily than Americans.”―Publishers Weekly

“Levenstein’s devotion to the Italian practice of medicine is admirable, and she delivers a charming story well told.”―Kirkus Reviews

"A funny and endearing but also deadly serious memoir of the Italian health care system by an astute and caring outsider.”―Booklist

"Finally an expat memoir which is not about food, foreign men, or house renovation, rich with insights into what makes these irresistible Italians tick . . . As the debate over universal healthcare, cost-cutting, and co-paying continues, Levenstein offers some timely, illuminating advice packed into a fascinating expat memoir both thought-provoking and fun to read."―The Italian Insider