a good warning against the complacency americans can have re. infectious disease.Also an overview of how disease has influenced prejudice and impacted immigration in us history. Very interesting ( )

Markel's work here is not just about what the title proclaims--and in fact, I imagine that's led to some disappointed readers--instead, it is as much about history, immigration into America, and fear as it is about disease, science, or epidemics. Yet, in bringing all of these topics together, it's a powerful look into the subjects and into the way populations have come to understand a variety of diseases which we're still working against today.

By splitting the book into six different chapters to match up with six separate diseases, Markel works to first explain a disease and where it actually may have begun (or sometimes, where it definitely didn't begin, despite popular thought), and then to dissect the understanding that culture came to about the same -- often, the understandings don't match up with history or truth, of course. And through case studies and discussions of how truth has been twisted or scarred in relation to each disease, many things become clearer, from why the popular understanding might have been shaped to allow for (or even promote) xenophobia and prejudice, on to what contemporary readers might best understand and fear about a disease, as opposed to what popular history or culture might suggest.

If there is a failing here, it's that Markel doesn't attempt (in more than an occasional sentence) to address whether America is like other nations (any or all) in its propensity to blame epidemics on immigrants, or whether this is a uniquely American pattern of thought. In some chapters, there are discussions of other nations/peoples blaming a given disease on another group, but the topic isn't addressed as a whole. In some ways, this is forgivable simply because Markel is admittedly an American historian, and may have felt this topic to be a far reach, but it does feel like something of a missing discussion. Also, the title and subtitle are, as suggested above, a bit misleading.

This book is as much about immigration and prejudice as it is about disease, and it is as much about the making of America as it is about epidemics. Some readers will come to this book for particular insights, based on the title, and perhaps be disappointed. Readers looking for a wider scope of understanding, though, may end up being more than pleased.

Absolutely, I'd recommend it. ( )

I settled down and opened the front cover. What? No influenza? No polio? I mean, he covers AIDS and TB, but certainly fear of polio gripped the nation for years! In any case, I sat down and began reading.

Markel is a doctor and a historian. His particular topic of choice is immigration, and in this case his focus is all those epidemics that were blamed on immigrants. This book was far more about perception of disease and response than about the passage of disease itself. In fact, he devotes a whole chapter to his misdiagnosis of diarrhea as cholera simply because he was treating Rwandan immigrants. It seems this encounter was the real impulse behind his writing. But while he has interesting things to say, this book is hampered by his narrow lens. At its best, Markel points out the similarities between the awful treatment of Chinese immigrants at the turn of the last century during a plague outbreak in San Francisco and the awful treatment of Haitian would-be immigrants at Guantanamo Bay during the AIDS scare. But while fear of typhus may have instigated one terrible event that hit the newspapers 80 years ago, it hardly merits a place in the top 6 epidemics of any country. (The event was the deaths of 26 Mexican workers while they were being deloused with a kerosene/gasoline mixture -- someone lit a cigarette.)

The book was certainly interesting. I knew a little too much about the diseases and Markel was merely an earnest researcher (i.e. not a particularly gifted writer), but I always find disease interesting, so this filled out an aspect I hadn't investigated before.