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Thomas A. Dooley (1927–1961)

Auteur de Dr. Tom Dooley’s Three Great Books

6 oeuvres 372 utilisateurs 4 critiques

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Œuvres de Thomas A. Dooley

Dr. Tom Dooley’s Three Great Books (1960) 118 exemplaires
The Night They Burned the Mountain (1960) 77 exemplaires
Deliver Us from Evil (1656) 70 exemplaires
The Edge of Tomorrow (1958) 58 exemplaires
Le Journal du docteur Tom Dooley (1960) 48 exemplaires
Doctor Tom Dooley's Great Books (1962) 1 exemplaire

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Reading these three books at one go gives an interesting overview of Dooley's personal evolution. Deliver Us from Evil is a mythic tale of good vs evil, as the cocky young Lt Dooley cuts through the red tape and bends every rule to aid thousands of Vietnamese refugees fleeing the Communist North after the partition of Viet Nam in 1954. Anti-American suspicion melts away as he brings the miracle of Western know-how to bear on their pitiful lives. The word "I" occurs at least a dozen times on every page. By the time The Edge of Tomorrow was written Dooley had discovered that one rule he couldn't bend was that forbidding known homosexuals from serving in the American military. This is of course passed over; we are simply presented with him in new role---a civilian working for an aid agency establishing a medical clinic in a remote village in Laos. The Night They Burned the Mountain continues this narrative, now at a different Laotian village. The locals are spoken of with great affection by Dooley but are presented as universally ignorant and desperate. The daily grind of seeing hundreds of sick and malnourished patients at the clinic is regularly punctuated by the arrival of an apparently hopeless case brought from another community several days' travel away. The victim has a disgusting disease or gross, disfiguring injury, or both, made worse by the application of useless and unhygenic local remedies. But, with soap, vitamins, and American wonder drugs (named, along with the companies that donated them), the patient is restored to health. The irony is that Dooley himself was suffering from melanoma, a cancer which if detected early has a 90% cure rate, but whose symptoms he ignored for months and treated with pain killers, until a visiting surgeon insisted on performing a biopsy which revealed metastatic cancer which killed Dooley two years later.
Dooley is a gifted and entertaining writer. The shallow anti-Communism of the first book evolves into a deeper consideration of man's inhumanity to man. Dooley speaks more of his own irascibility and short temper, his struggles with celebrity, in the last book. There are echoes of Thomas Merton. His references to Anne Frank, Dag Hammarskold, and Albert Schweitzer remind us of the moral struggles in the mid-20th C West. I have to say that in 2018 I can imagine worse things than naive idealism.
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Signalé
booksaplenty1949 | Aug 3, 2018 |
Thomas Dooley's humanitarian work was cited by JFK when he was launching the Peace Corps. Dooley wrote many books about his experience doing humanitarian work in South East Asia. The Edge of Tomorrow covers a year he spent establishing two hospitals in remote Laos, near the Chinese border. In some ways the work is a product of a time past, with much anti-communism sentiment. However, at it's heart this is a story of a group of people wanting to help fellow human beings. This title may a good primary source to those interested in the history of humanitarian work or South East Asia.… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
MissyAnn | May 6, 2009 |
One of the most inspiring books I read as an adolescent...beautifully written story of a young doctor in Viet Nam before the war and his challenges and rewards in helping the people of Viet Nam during the French invasion.
 
Signalé
latinobookgeek | Aug 7, 2007 |
One of the first few books that left an ever lasting impression on me. The unselfishness of this man who made such a difference in Viet Nam was incredible. This is a must read to any person who questions the motives of mankind. There are and have been good and giving people in the world.
 
Signalé
latinobookgeek | May 5, 2007 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
6
Membres
372
Popularité
#64,810
Évaluation
3.8
Critiques
4
ISBN
17

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