Want to read about doctoring through political strife? After getting crosswise with Mussolini’s Fascists, Levi is sentenced to the south. He hopes to ride out the exile at his easel, but the local doctors are compromised by their affection for the profession. Levi remembers one local doctor warning him about the peasants: “Everyone tried to get out of playing the doctor, but the fees were obligatory and set by the government; a doctor must see to it that they were kept up, out of a sense of duty toward his colleagues and a respect for general standards, and so on.” The ‘so on’ does the work Levi specializes in: the sweeping generalization, the festering condescension, yes, and the everlasting loyalty to the peasant. Despite never practicing, he becomes a doctor during his exile. Tending to the indigent ill humanizes Levi and he leaves behind, underneath all its sharp edges, a gem of political physician writing.