“This book will wrench your heart, precisely because it has a heart of its own. It’s not just another doctor book; it is the story of a children’s ward in a big hospital, filled with people, filled with doctors and nurses all working to keep these people alive, all avoiding like the plague any mention of death…. The account is shocking enough, but the ending is the real shocker. Glasser writes with passion and with an uncommon skill at choosing exactly the right words. WARD 402 is a triumphant exposition of the human will.”
- Newsday
“WARD 402 is a powerful documentary novel which plunges you into the midst of a medical and moral dilemma – a dilemma that centers around one of the most memorable youngsters in literature.”
- Literary Guild Magazine
“The prose perfectly reflects the book: a confounding combination of heart-wrenching emotion and clinical impersonality. Trying to restart Mary’s heart, the intern hits her ‘as hard as I could in the middle of her chest with my fist.’ At that point the book hits the reader there too, just as hard.”
- Newsweek
“WARD 402 is a microcosm of hope in a last resort and of tragedy; of the conflict between research and patient care; of the problems which anxious parents face when they confront the terrifying, impersonal mystique of the hospital; and yes, of the problems which doctors face in trying to determine the exact moment at which experiment, and life-saving and sustaining techniques must stop so that a decent as well as inevitable death may ensue.”
- Long Island Catholic
“Dr. Glasser can describe a medical emergency in a way that makes the entire scene spring to life…. This is good and exciting writing.”
- New York Times Book Review
“WARD 402 has the magic words ‘best seller’ written all over it, and it couldn’t have happened to a worthier book.”
- San Francisco Chronicle
