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ABOUT THE SHOW, BILL W. AND DR. BOB
In 1929, famous New York stockbroker Bill Wilson crashes with the
stock market and becomes a hopeless drunk. Dr. Bob Smith, a surgeon
from Ohio, has also been an alcoholic for thirty years, often going into the
operating room with a hangover. Through an astonishing series of events,
Bill W. and Dr. Bob meet and form a relationship, each helping to keep
the other sober. This is the amazing and often humorous story of the two
men who pioneered Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as the story of their wives,
who founded Al Anon.
AUTHOR BIOS
SAMUEL SHEM
(pen-name of Stephen J. Bergman, M.D., Ph D.)
Visit the official website: www.samuelshem.com
“Samuel Shem is easily the finest and most important writer ever to focus on the lives of doctors and the world of medicine”—Harvard Club of New York Bulletin, 2008
Samuel Shem’s classic novel about medical internship, THE HOUSE OF GOD (1978), was recently named by the British medical journal The Lancet as one of the two most important American medical novels of the 20th century, the other being Sinclair Lewis’ ARROWSMITH. It has sold over two million copies, in thirty languages. John Updike wrote in an introduction to the 25th anniversary edition: “It glows with the celebratory essence of a real novel…A tale of venture into the valley of death and the truth of the flesh…more timely than ever.” Newsweek listed it in 1999 as “the novel to read about becoming a doctor.” The sequel, MOUNT MISERY (1996), about psychiatric residency at a mental hospital of that name, has been called “another medical classic,” and, by the Boston Globe, “outrageously funny, a sage and important novel by a healer and a Shakespearean.” These novels are bestsellers in America, Germany, Spain, Latvia, and the Czech Republic. Shem is also the author of FINE (1986), a novel about a psychoanalyst (“Funny…Full of dazzling, zany intelligence…energetic and exuberant”—New York Times”).THE SPIRIT OF THE PLACE (2008) has been called “the perfect bookend to THE HOUSE OF GOD” (Diversion) and was the winner of the national “Best Novel of 2008” award from USA Book News, and the national “IPPY—Independent Publishers Book Award (Silver Medal) for Best Literary Fiction 2009.”
“Written with a large heart, a healing touch, and wry and wise insight into the human condition. Worthy of the best of Samuel Shem, which is worthy indeed”—James Carroll. “This is a wonderful book about the surprises of the human connection and the infinite power of love.”—Susan Cheever. (see more reviews, etc., on website)
A 30th anniversary world-wide symposium—“Return to THE HOUSE OF GOD: Medical Residency Education 1978-2008”—was held in Cleveland in October 2008, with a volume of essays of the same title published by Kent State University Press.
Two of Shem’s plays, ROOM FOR ONE WOMAN and NAPOLEON’S DINNER, have been published in THE BEST SHORT PLAYS anthologies. With his wife, Janet Surrey, he is the author of BILL W. AND DR. BOB, a play about the relationship between the two men who founded Alcoholics Anonymous, which was named one of the “ten best plays” of the season in San Diego, is published and represented by Samuel French (2007, www.samuelfrench.com), and was an Off Broadway hit with 154 performances at the New World Stages in 2007 (billwanddrbob.com). BILL W. AND DR. BOB was the winner of the 2007 Performing Arts Award by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. The DVD of the Off Broadway production is available from Hazelden (www.hazelden.org). A revival of BILL W. AND DR. BOB will open in New York in 2011.
Shem and Surrey are also authors of a nonfiction book, WE HAVE TO TALK: HEALING DIALOGUES BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN (1999, Basic Books), winner of the 1999 Paradigm Shift Award of the Boston Interfaith Counseling Service, and a curriculum for middle/high school students MAKING CONNECTIONS: BUILDING GENDER DIALOGUE AND COMMUNITY IN SECONDARY SCHOOL (2007, Educators for Social Responsibility).
Shem has been honored as one of Boston Public Library’s “Literary Lights,” as one of “Boston’s Best Authors,” and as a speaker at the Hemingway Centennial Celebration at the JFK Library. He has received the Vanderbilt University Medal of Merit.
SHEM/BERGMAN is a prolific speaker all over the world. He has given commencement addresses at over fifty medical schools including, in 2009, the Commencement Address at Harvard Medical School. In 2008 he delivered the Gold Lecture in Medical Humanities at the American Association of Medical Colleges, and the 2008 keynote addresses at the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities, and the American Medical Student Association. His topic is “How to Stay Human in Medicine: from THE HOUSE OF GOD to THE SPIRIT OF THE PLACE.” He has published a noted essay, “Fiction as Resistance” (Annals of Internal Medicine 2002). The title of a December 8, 2008 profile in the Boston Globe was entitled, “He infuses mercy into practice of medicine."
STEPHEN J. BERGMAN, M.D., PH.D.
(pen-name: SAMUEL SHEM)
CURRICULUM VITAE
--Harvard College, B.A. Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa Honors, 1966
--Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford University, England, 1966-1969
Oxford University, Ph.D. in Physiology, 1971
--Harvard Medical School, M.D., Alpha Omega Alpha Honors, 1973
--Intern in Medicine, Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, 1973-4
--Resident in Psychiatry, McLean Hospital, 1974-77
--Instructor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School and Harvard University 1977-2002
--Private practice of psychiatry, 1977-2005
--Co-chair, PEN/New England, 1981-1987
--Director, Bill W. and Dr. Bob Project, Division on Addictions, Harvard Medical
School, 1992-present (Robert Wood Johnson Grant)
--Venture Partner, MPM Capital, “Investing in Healthcare Innovation,” 1994-2004
--Affiliated Scholar, Stone Center, Wellesley College, and co-director of the Gender
Relations Research Project at the Wellesley Centers for Women, 1992-2007
JANET SURREY, PH.D.
Janet Surrey is a clinical psychologist, Clinical Instructor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School, and a founding member with Jean Baker Miller of the Stone Center, Wellesley College, where she is Research Associate and co-director (with Steve Bergman) of the Gender Relations Research Project, and the Project on Conscious Coeducation. She has published numerous papers and has become known internationally for her work on a relational theory of women’s psychological development, diversity, mothering, and substance abuse. She is an internationally known psychologist as well as a Buddhist teacher, and co-author of:
WOMEN’S GROWTH IN CONNECTION: WRITINGS FROM THE STONE CENTER (Guilford Press, 1991)
WOMEN’S GROWTH IN DIVERSITY: MORE WRITINGS FROM THE STONE CENTER (Guilford Press, 1997)
MOTHERING AGAINST THE ODDS: DIVERSE VOICES OF CONTEMPORARY MOTHERS (Guilford Press, 1999).
She is also the co-author with Steve Bergman (pen-name, “Samuel Shem”) of BILL W. AND DR. BOB, a play about the relationship between the two men which led to the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, which opened Off Broadway in March 2007 (Samuel French, 2001), of WE HAVE TO TALK: HEALING DIALOGUES BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN (Basic Books, 1999) which won the ‘Paradigm Shift Award’ of the Boston Interfaith Counseling Service, 1999, and which has been published in approximately 15 countries, and of MAKING CONNECTION: GENDER AND DIALOGUE IN MIDDLE SCHOOL (in press).
Dr. Surrey is a 1997 recipient of the Massachusetts Psychological Association Career Contribution Award. As an Adjunct Professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, she has taught and written on spirituality and addiction, and as a Board Member of the Institute of Meditation and Psychotherapy, she has led workshops on Buddism and psychology.
Dr. Surrey received a B.A. from Tufts University, an M.A. from the Harvard School of Education, and a Ph.D. from George Washington University.
Drs. Surrey and Bergman live outside of Boston and are the parents of a daughter now attending college.
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