Have you - or anyone you know - ever waited for an operation? Queued in casualty? Had a baby in hospital - or on the side of the road? Been denied access to care because you couldn't afford it or because of where you live? Or maybe you are on the other side, working at the front line.

If so, this passionate, provocative polemic is for you. Emergency asks: why are our hospitals riddled with superbugs? Why do you need a licence for a car wash but not for a hospital?

Lucidly written and impeccably researched by health analyst and longstanding activist Marie O'Connor, Emergency gets behind the spin, exposing a sprawling, chaotic, dysfunctional system, riven with vested interests and warring hierarchies.

The trolley waits in A&E, the waltz of medicine with litigation, the assembly line in the labour ward, the heart of darkness that was the Lourdes Hospital: it's all here in our `world-class' health service, where the power of organised medicine is paralleled only by the pervasive cancer of bureaucracy, where the overarching influence of corporations is equalled only by the supine weakness of the state.

With verve and humour, O'Connor interrogates the agendas that are driving privatisation and centralisation, the twin peaks of government policy today. Why are we building a four-speed Ireland? Why should a vote - or a life - in a non-urban area be worth less than one in a city? Why should medical care depend on the size of your wallet?

In a tough and uncompromising yet compassionate and understanding look at our hospitals, O'Connor asks: how did we get it so wrong and how can we put it right?