num_pages: 258
description: The fearless memoir of a young forensic pathologist's rookie season as a NYC medical examiner and the cases hair-raising and heartbreaking and impossibly complex that shaped her as both a physician and a mother.Just two months before the September 11 terrorist attacks Dr. Judy Melinek began her training as a New York City forensic pathologist. With her husband T.J. and their toddler Daniel holding down the home front Judy threw herself into the fascinating world of death investigation performing autopsies investigating death scenes counseling grieving relatives. Working Stiff chronicles Judy's two years of training taking readers behind the police tape of some of the most harrowing deaths in the Big Apple including a firsthand account of the events of September 11 the subsequent anthrax bio-terrorism attack and the disastrous crash of American Airlines flight 587.Lively action-packed and loaded with mordant wit Working Stiff offers a firsthand account of daily life in one of America's most arduous professions and the unexpected challenges of shuttling between the domains of the living and the dead. The body never lies and through the murders accidents and suicides that land on her table Dr. Melinek lays bare the truth behind the glamorized depictions of autopsy work on shows like CSI and Law and Order to reveal the secret story of the real morgue.
language: English
title: Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner
publisher: Scribner