Sick
The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis-and the People Who Pay the Price
Chapter One
Gilbertsville
New York's Leatherstocking Country sits at the northern
foothills of the Catskill Mountains, a few hours' drive
from Manhattan. The name is a reference to the leggings
that colonial settlers wore during the 1700s, but it was
James Fenimore Cooper who immortalized the region in the
early 1800s, when he used it as the setting for his five
books about the frontier hero Natty Bumppo, a collection
that later became known as the Leatherstocking Tales. To
see the area today is to glimpse a landscape remarkably
like the one that first captured Cooper's imagination: a
"succession of hills and dales" rolling through the
countryside; "beautiful and thriving villages" nestled
in the "narrow, rich, and cultivated" valleys, with only
the occasional gas station and roadside pizza shack to
pierce the "romantic and picturesque character." For the
people who live in Leatherstocking Country now, this
largely unmolested geography provides precious
insulation from the rest of New York-even, it wou ... read full excerpt from: Sick ebook
