“Charles Bosk provides in these pages a rich and rigorous account of the ways in which medical ethics, ethnography, and social science illuminate the human condition. He is the finest ethnographer of his generation, and he offers to future generations a standard of ethnographic practice and reflection that is unrivaled in its appreciation of the nuances and complexities of making sense of people’s lives.”

Jonathan B. Imber, Wellesley College

“This is a brilliant book: astutely observed and elegantly written. Charles Bosk is the Erving Goffman of bioethics. He sees things the rest of us overlook.”--Carl Elliott, University of Minnesota

Carl Elliott

"Bosk’s reflexive reflections show ethnography and the ethnographer auto-ethnographised and found wanting. . . . There are complexities and riches in Bosk’s apologia pro vita sua. While the elegant, thoughtful writing is mostly nuanced, subtle and careful, occasionally a brutal, self-flagellatory honesty leaps from a book written at the end of a long professional career."

Times Higher Education

"[Bosk] brings to bear on a host of ethical concerns over 30 years’ experience in medical ethnography, in a text both thought-provoking and engaging. He examines both the social organization of bioethics as a growing occupational domain in health care, and the everyday ethical dilemma of sociologists who conduct ethnography in health care settings, including studying medical ethics."

Brenda L. Beagan | Canadian Journal of Sociology

"The chapters stand as loosely coupled explorations of issues that are critcal in bioethics, and with Bosk’s deft hand they are always enlightening."

John H. Evans | Social History of Medicine