Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing, 1850 1945

I enjoyed this book immensely. The author chronicles the history of nursing from pre-training schools to post-WW11. The author is not a nurse and her focus is on the history of women in society. The book is broken down into three parts - the nurse and the hospital before training (two chapters), the trained nurse: an apprentice to duty (four chapters), and the "re-forming" of nursing (four chapters). The style is easy to read and very detailed with narratives, biographies, and statistics. Anyone who is interested in the history of nursing should read this book.