Includes bibliographical references and index

The past -- Money -- Power -- Politics -- Place -- People -- Love and Hate -- Compassion -- Knowledge -- Humility -- Freedom -- Choice -- Luck -- The many -- The few -- The public good -- Fairness and justice -- Pain and pleasure -- Death -- Values

"A deeply affecting work from one of the important and innovative voices in American health and medicine." -Arianna Huffington, physician Sandro Galea examines what Americans miss when they fixate on healthcare: health. Americans spend more money on health than people anywhere else in the world. And what do they get for it? Statistically, not much. Americans today live shorter, less healthy lives than citizens of other rich countries, and these trends show no signs of letting up. The problem, Sandro Galea argues, is that Americans focus on the wrong things when they think about health. Our national understanding of what constitutes "being well" is centered on medicine -- the lifestyles we adopt to stay healthy, the insurance plans and prescriptions we fall back on when we're not. And while all these things are important, they've not proven to be the difference between healthy and unhealthy on the large scale. Well is a radical examination of the subtle and not-so-subtle factors that determine who gets to be healthy in America. Galea shows how the country's failing health is a product of American history and character -- and how refocusing on our national health can usher enlightenment across American life and politics."--

"In a stirring and radical new treatise from one of America's most respected voices in health and medicine, Well examines the subtle factors that determine who gets to be healthy in the United States. Physician Sandro Galea reckons with our country's many fraught relationships--with history, money, pain, and pleasure, which are in turn augmented by factors like luck, compassion, and values--in terms of how they determine the health of those in the world's richest country. Well represents a radical new approach to Americans' ingrained understanding of health. It examines the forces that are not typically part of the health discussion--but should be--and is a clarion call for where the country goes from here"--