Howard Markel - When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America and the Fears They Have Unleashed

A Globalist Best Book of the Year

A critically important book for this historical moment. A clarion call for the public (and the government) to recognize both the importance and the precariousness of public health as we enter the twenty-first century.

Health Affairs

Deft, interesting and informative.

The Roanoke Times

Dr. Markel is an epic historian, a wise scientist, and an elegant prose stylist. Written with humor, grace, insight, and warmth, When Germs Travel is a discerning portrait of illness, a comment on the immigrant experiences of the past and present, and a reflection on what it means to be a doctor in a society ruled by fear of contagion.

Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon

Markel writes with great attention to the human side of the story. A powerful, sweeping story about immigration, poverty, public health, scientific breakthroughs and medical failures.

Chicago Free Press

Markel proves just how compelling medical history can be in these lucid, thought-provoking accounts of the complex intersection of immigration policy and public health.

Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever

Highly readable. Dramatic and graphic.

Tucson Citizen

A timely book. Markel, a medical historian and himself a physician, knows that the so-called general reader needs to be guided through the maze of technicalities, and he does the guiding in a text as readable as it is reliable. It reads like a thriller.

Peter Gay, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University

Solid information on a serious subject, delivered with great assurance and style.

Kirkus Reviews

Dr. Markel is both passionate and compassionate about his subject and conveys this devotion in clear, precise, gentle prose that is in the tradition of such great doctor-writers as A. J. Cronin, Somerset Maugham, Sherwin Nuland, Lewis Thomas, and William Carlos Williamsdoctors for whom the patient was the important part of the story most necessary for breaking the reader's heart.

Larry Kramer, author of Reports from the Holocaust

A crisp, brisk and matter-of-fact narrative that can be more chilling than anything Stephen King has ever committed to paper. This important cautionary tale proves infectiously readable.

Flint Journal

Informative and important. For each epidemic, Markel weaves a vivid description of the natural history of the disease with an account of how the disease entered the United States, spread and ultimately faded away. Markel portrays these events through engrossing stories of individual victims. Enthralling. His ability to make medicine accessible and understandable to lay readers is remarkable.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

In this very readable book, Markel chronicles yet another way in which this fear has played a critical role in the history of the U.S.a nation built from collections of others. In addition to telling a fascinating historical story this book reminds us all that prejudice, no less than science, often drives health policy.

Jerusalem Post

AUTHOR

Quarantine!: East European Jewish Immigrants
and the New York City Epidemics of 1892

COAUTHOR

The H. L. Mencken Baby Book

The Portable Pediatrician

The Practical Pediatrician: The A to Z Guide to
Your Child's Health, Behavior, and Safety

COEDITOR

Formative Years: Children's Health in the United States, 18802000

An immigrant family looks at the Statue of Liberty as they await the barge that will take them from Ellis Island to their new lives in America.

To Kate,
who makes everything in my life, both on and off the written page, better