Consider this book a full-immersion experiment. Instead of examining health care from afar, investigative journalist Julie Salamon spent one-year tracking activities at Brooklyn's Maimonides Hospital, which has the only cancer center in a borough of 2.5 million people. What she discovered there was more complicated and less formulaic than any politician's nostrums. (For instance, how can one hospital effectively respond to the health needs of a community where 67 different languages are spoken?) Salamon's Hospital has all the drama of ER or House, with even more human complexity. That shouldn't surprise us: As Maimonides' chairman of the board noted, "Hospitals have a lot in common with the movie business. You've got your talent, entrepreneurs, ambition, ego stroking, the business versus the creative part. The big difference is that in the hospital you don't get second chances. Movies are make-believe. This is real life."