Dottoressa: An American Doctor in Rome (Unabridged‪)‬

After completing her medical training in New York, Susan Levenstein set off for a one-year adventure in Rome. Forty years later, she is still practicing medicine in the eternal city.

In Dottoressa: An American Doctor in Rome, Levenstein writes, with love and exasperation, about navigating her career through the renowned Italian tangle of brilliance and ineptitude, sexism and tolerance, rigidity and chaos. Part memoir starting with her epic quest for an Italian medical license and part portrait of Italy from a unique point of view, Dottoressa is packed with vignettes that illuminate the national differences in character, lifestyle, health, and health care between her two countries. Levenstein covers everything from hookup culture to neighborhood madmen, Italian hands-off medical training, bidets, the ironies of expatriation, and why Italians always pay their doctor’s bills.