Customer Reviews

Omaha Orange, Second Edition: A Popular History of EMS in America

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The book was written as a campaign memoir by the participant in a failed entitlement program (Title 12)--one the author chooses up front to portray as a crusade. It deliberately argues that the 1.2 billion dollars spent were well spent. It is openly Big Government and College of Surgeons in orientation. The book describes the fifteen components of Title 12 EMS system by putting them in chapter form. No effort at objective analysis is made because at least half of the EMS industry was glad to see the revolution the author describes fade away. Plenty of books by those on the other side of the argument are readily available. Passionate critics would not be hard to find. An analogous perspective would be. The author was alarmed that the end of big government would spell the end of regional emergency care systems. His alarm was first sounded in 1992. It is now seen by many as a prophecy. He tried to stop the fragmentation of comprehensive emergency care. He wound up writing a glimpse of a less than heroic future.

It is fair to say that an author should spell out any subjective tendency up front. He did. The preface tells one and all that it will be an exegesis or a journey into heresy. Campaign memoirs are not usually put in the form of settings and services grids. He thought the Title 12 EMS Experiment was right. He thought it was and is the high water mark of organized emergency care. Many do not agree. They have written their own books. This is the only one that lays down the purport of the failed but noble crusade. WE LOST BUT WE WERE RIGHT.

Boyd's Truth NJ Chapter CJP PhD, EMT-D