Public Health History

Considered the definitive history of the American healthcare system, The Social Transformation of American Medicine examines how the roles of doctors, hospitals, health plans, and government programs have evolved over the last two and a half centuries. Updated with a new preface and an epilogue analyzing developments since the early 1980s, this new edition is a must-listen for anyone concerned about the future of our fraught healthcare system.

A new field of collective intelligence has emerged in the last few years, prompted by a wave of digital technologies that make it possible for organizations and societies to think at large scale. This "bigger mind" - human and machine capabilities working together - has the potential to solve the great challenges of our time. So why do smart technologies not automatically lead to smart results?

For Chinese immigrant Wong Chut King, surviving in San Francisco meant a life in the shadows. His passing on March 6, 1900, would have been unremarkable if a city health officer hadn't noticed a swollen black lymph node on his groin - a sign of bubonic plague. Empowered by racist pseudoscience, officials rushed to quarantine Chinatown while doctors examined Wong's tissue for telltale bacteria. If the devastating disease was not contained, San Francisco would become the American epicenter of an outbreak that had already claimed 10 million lives worldwide.

When two Stanford graduate students set out to create a new kind of cigarette that wouldn’t kill them, they didn’t foresee all the obstacles that lay ahead — or the powerful forces their invention would unleash. Nearly 10 years after the launch of the JUUL, Backfired: The Vaping Wars asks: Could e-cigarettes have been the solution to one of the world’s most pressing public health problems—or was this technology doomed to introduce a whole new generation to nicotine, and end up perpetuating an intractable addiction?

ADHD may be the defining diagnosis of our time. According to the latest data, more than 10 percent of American children (that’s 7.1 million kids) have been diagnosed with ADHD. And the number of stimulant prescriptions for adults in their 30s has shot up nearly threefold since 2012. In recent years, this explosion in demand has combined with other factors to create a widespread stimulant shortage in the US. In the second installment of Backfired, cohosts Leon Neyfakh and Arielle Pardes look at the unintended consequences of the ADHD industry, and trace the surprising path that brought us here.

"Allows readers to practically experience firsthand how humans have adapted to and dealt with disease throughout history...necessary and timely...engaging and entertaining. Highly recommended." ―Library Journal, starred "[A] splendid examination...Deeply insightful if unsettling." ―Kirkus...

This sweeping exploration of the impact of epidemic diseases looks at how mass infectious outbreaks have shaped society, from the Black Death to today, and in a new preface addresses the global threat of COVID-19. In a clear and accessible style, Frank M. Snowden reveals the ways that diseases have not only influenced medical science and public health, but also transformed the arts, religion, intellectual history, and warfare.

Over the past 50 years, rates of autoimmunity and chronic disease have exploded. In this provocative book, Dr. Thomas Cowan argues for a direct causal relationship to a corresponding increase in the number of vaccines American children typically receive. The goal of these vaccines is precisely what we’re now seeing in such abundance among our chronically ill children: the provocation of immune response. Cowan looks at emerging evidence that certain childhood illnesses are actually protective of disease later in life.

Martin A. Lee traces the dramatic social history of marijuana, from its origins to its emergence in the 1960s as a defining force in a culture war that has never ceased. Lee describes how the illicit marijuana subculture overcame government opposition and morphed into a dynamic, multibillion-dollar industry. Colorful, illuminating, and at times irreverent, this is a fascinating listen for recreational users and patients, students and doctors, musicians and accountants, Baby Boomers and their kids, and anyone who has ever wondered about the secret life of this ubiquitous herb.

On a foggy October morning in 1347 a handful of battered ships creaked into Messina, their decks littered with the dying. Officials pushed the vessels back out to sea; by dusk the pestilence had already walked ashore. The Day the Black Death Arrived drops you onto that quay at first light—smell of brine, the weight of bodies, the bureaucratic misreadings—and then follows how one local calamity unstitched a continent’s certainties: markets stalled, churches hesitated, families fled and, in the wind they carried, contagion rode with them. This is a close, scene-driven account of a hinge...

The inspiring story of how we overcame a history of infectious disease, poisonous environments, and early death and unlocked an explosion in human potential—and a vision for the work ahead to optimize human flourishing in the twenty-first century “Michelle Williams understands what too many...

When a mysterious new virus appeared in late 2019, few imagined the world would shut down within months. Streets fell silent. Hospitals overflowed. Borders closed. For the first time in living memory, nearly everyone on Earth faced the same invisible threat at once. The Year the World Locked Down tells the story of how it happened — and what it did to us. From overwhelmed hospitals in Bergamo and New York, to desperate families in Guayaquil and Delhi, to leaders making impossible choices in Beijing, London, Brasília, and Washington, this book follows the pandemic as it spread, mutated, ...

Pandora's Lab takes us from opium's heyday as the pain reliever of choice to recognition of opioids as a major cause of death in the United States; from the rise of trans fats as the golden ingredient for tastier, cheaper food to the heart disease epidemic that followed; and from the cries to ban DDT for the sake of the environment to an epidemic-level rise in world malaria.

The Lamp and the Legacy: Florence Nightingale and the Birth of Modern Nursing Discover the extraordinary life of Florence Nightingale, the woman who turned compassion into science and forever transformed the world of healthcare. Known as “The Lady with the Lamp,” Nightingale not only brought comfort to soldiers during the Crimean War but also built the foundations of modern nursing, public health, and evidence-based medicine. Through ten richly detailed chapters, The Lamp and the Legacy traces Nightingale’s journey from her privileged Victorian upbringing to her groundbreaking reforms...

If you have wondered why scientific progress in unraveling ME has been stymied for years, Hillary Johnson's The Why offers a concise history of the American Center for Disease Control's failures, buttressed by explanations of the agency's motives. Johnson (author of Osler's Web) enumerates the harm CDC has caused sufferers, comparing the CDC's pseudo-science with 1930s eugenics. She makes the case that in lieu of undertaking realistic disease control methods, the agency has instead mimicked techniques employed by major corporations to mislead and manipulate public opinion. Rather than admit...

In the crowded cities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ice cream was not a sealed product served with disposable utensils. It was sold on street corners and sidewalks, scooped into thick glass cups, and handed from one customer to the next. These glasses were briefly rinsed—sometimes not at all—before being reused. They were known as penny licks, and they were considered perfectly normal. At the same time, tuberculosis was one of the most widespread and deadly diseases in the world. Penny Licks: When Ice Cream Spread Tuberculosis explores how an ordinary treat ...

Written by cohosts of the hit Death Panel podcast and longtime disability justice and healthcare activists Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie, Health Communism first examines how capital has instrumentalized health, disability, madness, and illness to create a class seen as "surplus," regarded as a fiscal and social burden. Demarcating the healthy from the surplus, the worker from the "unfit" to work, the authors argue, serves not only to undermine solidarity but to mark whole populations for extraction by the industries that have emerged to manage and contain this "surplus" population.

Blood Runs Coal comes at a time of resurgent labor movements in the United States and the current administration's attempts to bolster the fossil-fuel industry. Brilliantly researched and compellingly written, it sheds light on the far-reaching effects of industrial and socioeconomic change that unfold across America to this day.

The Infirmary Ward takes readers inside the workhouse infirmaries of 19th-century England and Wales, where sickness and poverty collided under the Poor Law. Drawing on official records, inspection reports, and contemporary accounts, this book explores how care was delivered to the poorest and most vulnerable: the sick, the elderly, women in childbirth, children, and those deemed “incurable.” It examines daily life in the wards, medical treatment, nursing, diet, discipline, and the moral assumptions that shaped who deserved comfort and who did not. More than a history of medicine, The ...

New York Times-bestselling author Ron Powers offers a searching, richly researched narrative of the social history of mental illness in America paired with the deeply personal story of his two sons' battles with schizophrenia. From the centuries of torture of "lunatiks" at Bedlam Asylum to the...