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Polio
- An American Story
- Narrated by: Jonathan Hogan
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
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Publisher's summary
Pulitzer Prize, History, 2006
This comprehensive and gripping narrative covers all the challenges, characters, and controversies in America's relentless struggle against polio. Funded by philanthropy and grassroots contributions, Salk's killed-virus vaccine (1954) and Sabin's live-virus vaccine (1961) began to eradicate this dreaded disease.Author David M. Oshinsky, a multiple New York Times Notable Book winner and University of Texas professor, is a leading American political and cultural historian.
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Feeling feverish, tired, or achy? Listening to Gina Kolata's engrossing account of the 1918 Influenza epidemic is sure to give you the chills. A gripping work of science writing, Flu addresses the prospects for a great epidemic recurring, and considers what can be done to prevent it.
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overexcited
- By Marilyn on 07-23-03
By: Gina Kolata
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Influenza
- The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic
- By: Dr. Jeremy Brown
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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On the 100th anniversary of the devastating pandemic of 1918, Jeremy Brown, a veteran ER doctor, explores the troubling, terrifying, and complex history of the flu virus, from the origins of the Great Flu that killed millions, to vexing questions such as: are we prepared for the next epidemic, should you get a flu shot, and how close are we to finding a cure?
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Important read
- By Kathryn C. on 12-21-18
By: Dr. Jeremy Brown
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Epic Measures
- One Doctor. Seven Billion Patients.
- By: Jeremy N. Smith
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Moneyball meets medicine in this remarkable chronicle of one of the greatest scientific quests of our time - the groundbreaking program to answer the most essential question for humanity: How do we live and die? - and the visionary mastermind behind it.
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Fabulously insightful read!
- By Dr. Jack E. Fincham on 10-08-15
By: Jeremy N. Smith
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Teeth
- The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America
- By: Mary Otto
- Narrated by: Suehyla El'Attar
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Teeth takes listeners on a disturbing journey into America's silent epidemic of oral disease, exposing the hidden connections between tooth decay and stunted job prospects, low educational achievement, social mobility, and the troubling state of our public health.
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Content everyone should know; dismal narration
- By Elaine on 08-04-17
By: Mary Otto
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King of Hearts
- The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery
- By: G. Wayne Miller
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.
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Loved every minute
- By Brian on 02-05-08
By: G. Wayne Miller
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The Pandemic Century
- One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris
- By: Mark Honigsbaum
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu to the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 "parrot fever" pandemic, through the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last one hundred years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms.
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Pretty good
- By Baz 12345 on 04-03-20
By: Mark Honigsbaum
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The Family That Couldn't Sleep
- A Medical Mystery
- By: D.T. Max
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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For 200 years, a noble Venetian family has suffered from an inherited disease that strikes their members in middle age, stealing their sleep, eating holes in their brains, and ending their lives in a matter of months. In Papua New Guinea, a primitive tribe is nearly obliterated by a sickness whose chief symptom is uncontrollable laughter. Across Europe, millions of sheep rub their fleeces raw before collapsing. What these strange conditions share is their cause: prions.
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A great scientific mystery
- By David on 11-04-06
By: D.T. Max
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Silent Invasion
- The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, Covid-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It's Too Late
- By: Deborah Birx
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 22 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In late February 2020, Dr. Deborah Birx—a lifelong federal health official who had worked at the CDC, the State Department, and the US Army across multiple presidential administrations—was asked to join the Trump White House Coronavirus Task Force and assist the already faltering federal response to the Covid-19 pandemic. For weeks, she’d been raising the alarm behind the scenes about what she saw happening in public—from the apparent lack of urgency at the White House to the routine downplaying of the risks to Americans.
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Great insight into Public Health
- By Ann-Karen Weller on 05-09-22
By: Deborah Birx
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The Butchering Art
- Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
- By: Lindsey Fitzharris
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.
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Not one boring moment!
- By WRWF on 12-22-17
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invites further reading on Malcolm X
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This searing story of slavery and freedom in the Chesapeake reveals the pivot in the nation’s path between the founding and civil war. Frederick Douglass recalled that slaves living along Chesapeake Bay longingly viewed sailing ships as "freedom’s swift-winged angels." In 1813 those angels appeared in the bay as British warships coming to punish the Americans for declaring war on the empire. Drawn from new sources, Alan Taylor's riveting narrative re-creates the events that inspired black Virginians, haunted slaveholders, and set the nation on a new and dangerous course.
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one of the best audiobooks I've read recently
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It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person's or government's control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.
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interesting insight into interwar period!
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Mosquito
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Now in audio - a fascinating work of popular science from a world-renowned expert on mosquitoes and a prize-winning reporter. In this lively and comprehensive portrait of the mosquito, its role in history, and its threat to mankind, Spielman and D'Antonio take a mosquito's-eye view of nature and man. They show us how mosquitoes breed, live, mate, and die and introduce us to their enemies, both natural and man-made.
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Beware! Book content was written 2 decades ago
- By Steve on 09-11-23
By: Michael D'Antonio, and others
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Viruses, Plagues, and History
- Past, Present, and Future
- By: Michael B. A. Oldstone
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
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The story of viruses and humanity is a story of fear and ignorance, of grief and heartbreak, and of great bravery and sacrifice. Michael Oldstone tells all these stories as he illuminates the history of the devastating diseases that have tormented humanity, focusing mostly on the most famous viruses. For this revised edition, Oldstone includes discussions of new viruses like SARS, bird flu, virally caused cancers, chronic wasting disease, and West Nile. Viruses, Plagues, and History paints a sweeping portrait of humanity's long-standing conflict with our unseen viral enemies.
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very detailed, but very statistical
- By ekhensel15 on 01-12-19
What listeners say about Polio
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Patricia B Tripoli
- 07-22-08
Wonderful
I remember so many of these events that it almost makes me feel old. Yet as an acknowledgement of this story as history, it does cover one hundred years. So I shouldn't feel too old. :-) My mother campaigned to get a municipal pool built in order to stop the spread of polio. There is a plague commemorating her efforts on that pool today. I work with someone who was diagnosed with Post-polio syndrome.
Enough of my reminiscences... this book is just wonderful. It is anything but a dry history story. Nor is it a dry medical text. But admittingly, it is not a novel either, although it reads much like one in several areas.
Through this book you will learn about this disease, about philanthropic crusades, about research and ethics, and about the people intimatley involved in it all. The truth of this story is all told so well and narrated just as it should be.
I usually listen only in the car. But for this title, I found myself listening every time I was alone in the house as well. And I was just as sad when this book ended as I have been with some of my favorite novels. This is well worth the purchase.
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Overall
- Leigh A
- 10-02-07
Memorable History
The Pulitzer Prize for history 2006, it is life and times of those involved and their legacy to American culture, science, and medicine, warts and all. The petty behaviors as well as the great accomplishments are given diligent study. I can highly recommend this to any interested in American history of twentieth century. Discussion of the disease itself and the science involved in the development of the vaccines is secondary to the story. If you enjoyed Thomas Hager's Demon Under the Microscope, or John Berry's The Great Influenza, you will like this.
Jonathan Hogan's narration is good but not memorable, of course the book does not lend itself to acting skills.
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20 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Jason V. Kilmer
- 08-07-18
Fascinating Story of What Unity Can Achieve
I selected this book because polio affected my family and I wanted to learn more about the spread of it in 20th century America and the drive to find a vaccine. My grandfather contracted polio as a child, and although fortunate to survive, he was partially crippled throughout his life and used a cane, which I remember bringing home with us as a treasured family heirloom after he passed away. His battle with polio was decades earlier than the concentrated national effort to find a cure in the 1940s and 1950s, but as I read accounts in this book of children twisted, crippled, or paralyzed by this dreaded disease, and parents begging to get their children into the vaccine trials despite the risks, it made me think of what my great-grandparents went through when my grandfather contracted polio. There was no potential vaccine then and polio was misunderstood as to its origin and characteristics. The poor housewives who were told that a spotless home was the only way to protect from polio and the guilt they felt if their children contracted it despite their tireless efforts scrubbing and washing and spraying! I read of these mistaken notions and imagined my great-grandmother wondering what she had done wrong that allowed her son to be struck down by polio.
America advanced from this early misconception of the virus, largely through heavy losses to other viruses, particularly influenza in WWI, in which America lost 44,000 to influenza compared to around 50,000 in combat-related casualties. I brought to my reading of this book only a general knowledge of the great worldwide influenza epidemic during WWI, and it was very interesting to read about how searching for a vaccine to protect America's troops from similar disease losses in WWII ultimately prepared the people and technologies in the 1940s who would also create the polio vaccine in the 1950s.
This led me to another personal connection with the book that came as a surprise. Jonas Salk is famous for developing the polio vaccine, of course, but I knew nothing about his education and research background before his landmark achievement. My son in-law will be entering grad school this fall at the University of Michigan, into the school's internationally renowned epidemiology program. He will continue his research of infectious diseases, epidemics, pandemics, and public policies to prevent and control these. It is a fascinating field. It turns out that the Michigan epidemiology program has a number of legendary figures in its hall of fame, including Jonas Salk and his mentor, Dr. Thomas Francis. Dr. Francis was the first to isolate the influenza virus, and he secured millions of dollars of government grant money to build up Michigan's epidemiology program with a specific mission to protect America's troops from influenza. Dr. Francis convinced young Jonas Salk to join the influenza research program, and Salk was a professor of epidemiology at Michigan for 6 years, focused primarily on influenza. After 6 years under Dr. Francis's wing, Salk was eager to spread his wings and create something similar to Michigan somewhere else. He chose Pittsburgh, and thanks to that school's visionary leaders, received generous private donations from Pittsburgh's wealthiest benefactors, and established his own epidemiology program at the University of Pittsburgh. Salk ever-after credited Dr. Francis and Michigan for the incredible lessons he learned about viruses, laboratory testing, and vaccine production techniques. Dr. Francis would later play a key role in lending his name and reputation to Salk's national polio vaccine trials. So my son-in-law will be walking hallowed hallways where Jonas Salk, Dr. Francis, and other luminaries in epidemiology exchanged ideas and conducted critical tests that made our world much healthier and safer from disease in 50 years of concentrated scientific effort than it had been in the prior 5000 years of medical experimentation, as the author notes.
This book goes into interesting detail about FDR and how polio affected him, and perhaps more importantly, how he affected the public' awareness of polio and willingness to donate money to help fight it. Polio was the first disease to spawn national fundraising drives, such as the March of Dimes, and this forever changed America's view of laboratories, researchers, human drug trials, and turned Salk into a national hero. I was disappointed, but not surprised, at the internal drama, ego, and envy behind the scenes, but the race to find a safe and effective vaccine was just that - a race. Races involve competition, and Albert Sabin was Salk's primary rival, only rivalry in this case would still produce something of benefit to the nation since the winners would be America's children, receiving protection against a terrible disease. The competing and different theories of Salk and Sabin made for interesting reading. One of the heartbreaking things with vaccines, as captured in some poignant vignettes in this book, is that there was an age beyond which the vaccine was not effective. Although young children received the blessed protection from the polio vaccine starting in the mid-1950s, older children and teens were not targeted to receive it and still contracted polio and died. One mother lamented that her child, dying of polio, was born less than a year too early to be eligible for the vaccine trials. We take tried and true immunizations for granted now, but in the 1950s during national trials, parents were desperate for hope and far too many had theirs crushed by timing.
Finally, this book illustrates that at one time America could unite in a common cause that could benefit its most vulnerable citizens. Rich and poor alike willingly joined forces. Fundraisers encouraged ALL Americans, with FDR's warm endorsement, to dig deeply and generously into individual and corporate pockets to help crippled children by seeking a cure for polio. There is a tendency today as there was then, to castigate the super-wealthy for not doing "enough" to help charities, but the figures who donated the most to fight polio included the Carnegies, Mellons, Rockefellers, and others. Some of these poured millions of dollars into Salk's proposed research facilities in Pittsburgh before he had become a national hero. They believed in what he was trying to do and they put their money behind their hopes for his theories. The combination of government grants at Michigan for influenza and later for polio vaccine trials, and private funding for building facilities and keeping them equipped, allowed teams of researchers to make advances that would have taken decades longer, or never happened at all. It was a terrifically effective model of a nation uniting to tackle a life-or-death problem. The nation had done this in war, but this was storming cell walls rather than beaches at Normandy, test tubes rather than enemy tanks. Living in a very divided America in 2018, I listened to this book with renewed hope that under the right conditions, our people could unite for the common good and let it bring out our best selves regardless of party or economic status. Superbly written, and skillfully narrated, this is a worthwhile audiobook in every way.
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- J.D
- 11-22-17
Another superb audiobook
I admit I might be biased. I contracted polio in 1952, at two years of age, in one of the biggest epidemic years before the vaccine. Many surgeries later, I'm still upright and grateful for that, although with enough handicaps to keep me humble.
A gripping story from the beginning of the book, I felt the panic that parents dealt with during the polio years, as I had heard my mom tell me about the widespread fears of parents during those years.
When we become complacent about health issues that used to terrify human beings, it's worth taking the time to read this book. It reminds me of how much we take for granted with our health. My kids have no idea what polio was and did to so many human beings. Many young parents do not want to immunize their children.
This book provides a searing look into our early 20th century American history of health related diseases. I highly recommend it as well as other books by this author. A history lesson amidst a story of America.
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-28-15
I was part of this story!
Having been in one of the test groups, it was very interesting to read the back-story.
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- Linda
- 09-17-13
Told the American Polio story as never before.
What did you love best about Polio?
As one of the children receiving either the shots in 1954 or 1955 and knowing first-hand the hard decisions my father made each summer as to whether my sister and I would be allowed to swim, I found this book to be one of the best non-fiction offerings I have read in a long time. It is so good and so filled with facts that I am leaving it on my iTouch so as to give it another read next month.
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- Linda
- 08-21-07
Wonderful health history!
I thoroughly enjoyed this intriguing book! We should never forget the endelible mark that has been left on our past from this disease!
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- Cassandra N.
- 03-05-15
Thank you Audible!
This book is a required reading for one of my nursing classes. I figured out very early on that I just did not have enough hours in the day to study for my other classes and get this book finished in print. I turned to Audible so that I could list to the book during my hour commute to work, and 35-45 minute commute to campus. Thank you for the hands free alternative, it's literally been a necessity this semester. Now to write the paper, again thank you so much! On the books topic, the first half of the book was very anticlimactic. I found the latter half to be more interesting, although universally educational as the development of the polio vaccine was before my time.
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- S.
- 10-21-11
Great story -
This is a fascinating story - and while it is a bit long, I was enthralled by the story. The narrator was "C" grade, but the story is compelling and worth every minute.
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- Nina S-G
- 02-09-17
Ambitious Medical Historical
This ambitious medical historical managed to keep the human element of the story in the forefront. The narrator was scholarly, but never boring. I always appreciate the opportunity to continue learning about medical history, as the retrospective gives me background for making my personal medical choices in todays quickly evolving world of medical choices.
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