Pox Americana

Pox Americana
Author: Elizabeth A. Fenn
Publsiher: Hill and Wang
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2002-10-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781466808041

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The astonishing, hitherto unknown truths about a disease that transformed the United States at its birth A horrifying epidemic of smallpox was sweeping across the Americas when the American Revolution began, and yet we know almost nothing about it. Elizabeth A. Fenn is the first historian to reveal how deeply variola affected the outcome of the war in every colony and the lives of everyone in North America. By 1776, when military action and political ferment increased the movement of people and microbes, the epidemic worsened. Fenn's remarkable research shows us how smallpox devastated the American troops at Québec and kept them at bay during the British occupation of Boston. Soon the disease affected the war in Virginia, where it ravaged slaves who had escaped to join the British forces. During the terrible winter at Valley Forge, General Washington had to decide if and when to attempt the risky inoculation of his troops. In 1779, while Creeks and Cherokees were dying in Georgia, smallpox broke out in Mexico City, whence it followed travelers going north, striking Santa Fe and outlying pueblos in January 1781. Simultaneously it moved up the Pacific coast and east across the plains as far as Hudson's Bay. The destructive, desolating power of smallpox made for a cascade of public-health crises and heartbreaking human drama. Fenn's innovative work shows how this mega-tragedy was met and what its consequences were for America.

Pox Americana

Pox Americana
Author: Elizabeth A. Fenn
Publsiher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2002-10-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 080907821X

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A horrifying epidemic of smallpox was sweeping across the Americas when the War of Independence began, and yet little is known about it. Fenn reveals how deeply "variola" affected the outcome of the war in every colony and the lives of everyone in North America. Illustrations.

Pox Americana

Pox Americana
Author: Elizabeth A. Fenn
Publsiher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2001-10-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780809078202

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Recreates one of the most overlooked chapters in American history--the smallpox epidemic that coincided with the Revolutionary War--tracing its influence on colonial life and the course of the war.

Pox Americana

Pox Americana
Author: Elizabeth Anne Fenn
Publsiher: Unknown
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2001
Genre: Medicine
ISBN: 0965031586

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Publisher description: A horrifying epidemic of smallpox was sweeping across the Americas when the War of Independence began, and yet we know almost nothing about it. Elizabeth A. Fenn reveals how deeply variola affected the outcome of the war in every colony and the lives of everyone in North America. By 1776, when military action and political ferment increased the movement of people and microbes, the epidemic worsened. Fenn's research shows us how smallpox devastated the American troops at Quebec and kept them at bay during the British occupation of Boston. Soon the disease affected the war in Virginia, where it ravaged slaves who had escaped to join the British forces. During the terrible winter at Valley Forge, General Washington had to decide if and when to attempt the risky inoculation of his troops. In 1779, while Creeks and Cherokees were dying in Georgia, smallpox broke out in Mexico City, whence it followed travelers going north, striking Santa Fe and outlying pueblos in January 1781. Simultaneously it moved up the Pacific coast and east across the plains as far as Hudson's Bay. The destructive, desolating power of smallpox made for a cascade of public-health crises and heartbreaking human drama. Fenn's work shows how this tragedy was met and what its consequences were for America.

Rotting Face

Rotting Face
Author: R. G. Robertson
Publsiher: Caxton Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780870044977

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The smallpox epidemic of 1837-1838 forever changed the tribes of the Northern Plains.a Before it ran out of human fuel, the disease claimed 20,000 souls.a R.G. Robertson tells the story of this deadly virus with modern implications. "

Natives Newcomers

Natives   Newcomers
Author: Elizabeth Anne Fenn
Publsiher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 116
Release: 1983
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807841013

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Natives and Newcomers: The Way We Lived in North Carolina before 1770

Pox

Pox
Author: Michael Willrich
Publsiher: Penguin
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2011-03-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781101476222

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The untold story of how America's Progressive-era war on smallpox sparked one of the great civil liberties battles of the twentieth century. At the turn of the last century, a powerful smallpox epidemic swept the United States from coast to coast. The age-old disease spread swiftly through an increasingly interconnected American landscape: from southern tobacco plantations to the dense immigrant neighborhoods of northern cities to far-flung villages on the edges of the nascent American empire. In Pox, award-winning historian Michael Willrich offers a gripping chronicle of how the nation's continentwide fight against smallpox launched one of the most important civil liberties struggles of the twentieth century. At the dawn of the activist Progressive era and during a moment of great optimism about modern medicine, the government responded to the deadly epidemic by calling for universal compulsory vaccination. To enforce the law, public health authorities relied on quarantines, pesthouses, and "virus squads"-corps of doctors and club-wielding police. Though these measures eventually contained the disease, they also sparked a wave of popular resistance among Americans who perceived them as a threat to their health and to their rights. At the time, anti-vaccinationists were often dismissed as misguided cranks, but Willrich argues that they belonged to a wider legacy of American dissent that attended the rise of an increasingly powerful government. While a well-organized anti-vaccination movement sprang up during these years, many Americans resisted in subtler ways-by concealing sick family members or forging immunization certificates. Pox introduces us to memorable characters on both sides of the debate, from Henning Jacobson, a Swedish Lutheran minister whose battle against vaccination went all the way to the Supreme Court, to C. P. Wertenbaker, a federal surgeon who saw himself as a medical missionary combating a deadly-and preventable-disease. As Willrich suggests, many of the questions first raised by the Progressive-era antivaccination movement are still with us: How far should the government go to protect us from peril? What happens when the interests of public health collide with religious beliefs and personal conscience? In Pox, Willrich delivers a riveting tale about the clash of modern medicine, civil liberties, and government power at the turn of the last century that resonates powerfully today.

Midnight Rising

Midnight Rising
Author: Tony Horwitz
Publsiher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2011-10-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781429996983

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A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 A Library Journal Top Ten Best Books of 2011 A Boston Globe Best Nonfiction Book of 2011 Bestselling author Tony Horwitz tells the electrifying tale of the daring insurrection that put America on the path to bloody war Plotted in secret, launched in the dark, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was a pivotal moment in U.S. history. But few Americans know the true story of the men and women who launched a desperate strike at the slaveholding South. Now, Midnight Rising portrays Brown's uprising in vivid color, revealing a country on the brink of explosive conflict. Brown, the descendant of New England Puritans, saw slavery as a sin against America's founding principles. Unlike most abolitionists, he was willing to take up arms, and in 1859 he prepared for battle at a hideout in Maryland, joined by his teenage daughter, three of his sons, and a guerrilla band that included former slaves and a dashing spy. On October 17, the raiders seized Harpers Ferry, stunning the nation and prompting a counterattack led by Robert E. Lee. After Brown's capture, his defiant eloquence galvanized the North and appalled the South, which considered Brown a terrorist. The raid also helped elect Abraham Lincoln, who later began to fulfill Brown's dream with the Emancipation Proclamation, a measure he called "a John Brown raid, on a gigantic scale." Tony Horwitz's riveting book travels antebellum America to deliver both a taut historical drama and a telling portrait of a nation divided—a time that still resonates in ours.