The Histories of Epidemics in the United States

To assist teachers who are working to historicize the COVID-19 pandemic and to offer our readers
resources to better understand the histories of epidemics and public health interventions,
the Process staff has updated and reissued its “Histories of Epidemics in the United States
Index,” which includes book reviews published in the Journal of American History over the past
fifty years. We have limited the index to histories of communicable disease; in doing so, we have
omitted important work on other medical conditions, such as cancer or substance abuse. To
maintain a manageable focus, we have also excluded excellent titles in related subfields
including the histories of science, technology, and medicine; public health and health advocacy;
cleanliness and sanitation; disability, death; and medical biography.

We are also providing free access to our “Documenting COVID-19” roundtables, part of our public history reviews (edited by Kathleen Franz and Catherine Gudis) from our December 2020 issue. You can access them through October 31, 2022.

Documenting COVID-19
Precedents to Documenting COVID-19
Viral Lessons
Viral Inequalities and an Ethics of Care

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Year	Title	Author	DOI
1975	The Destroying Angel: The Conquest of Smallpox in Colonial Boston	Ola Elizabeth Winslow	https://doi.org/10.2307/1901317
1976	Epidemic and Peace, 1918	Alfred W. Crosby, Jr.	https://doi.org/10.2307/1888231
1986	No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States since 1880	Allan M. Brandt	https://doi.org/10.2307/1903678
1988	The Tuberculosis Movement: A Public Health Campaign in the Progressive Era	Michael E. Teller	https://doi.org/10.2307/1908439
1989	Disease and Distinctiveness in the American South	Suzanne Linder	https://doi.org/10.2307/2936444
1990	Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever: History of a Twentieth-Century Disease	Victoria A. Harden	https://doi.org/10.2307/2079629
1991	From TB to AIDS: Epidemics among Urban Blacks since 1900	David McBride	https://doi.org/10.2307/2078571
1992	Bargaining for Life: A Social History of Tuberculosis, 1876–1938	Barbara Bates	https://doi.org/10.2307/2080496
1992	Dirt and Disease: Polio before FDR	Naomi Rogers	https://doi.org/10.2307/2080512
1992	Sentinel for Health: A History of the Centers for Disease Control	Elizabeth W. Etheridge	https://doi.org/10.2307/2081136
1993	The Mississippi Valley’s Great Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878	Khaled J. Bloom	https://doi.org/10.2307/2081753
1994	Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the “Immigrant Menace”	Alan M. Kraut	https://doi.org/10.2307/2082332
1995	Disease and Class: Tuberculosis and the Shaping of Modern North American Society	Georgina D. Feldberg	https://doi.org/10.2307/2945740
1996	Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health	Judith Walzer Leavitt	https://doi.org/10.2307/2952837
1996	Fevered Lives: Tuberculosis in American Culture since 1870	Katherine Ott	https://doi.org/10.2307/2952655
1997	Death Stalks the Yakama: Epidemiological Transitions and Mortality on the Yakama Indian Reservation, 1888–1964	Clifford E. Trafier	https://doi.org/10.2307/2567293
1995	Networks of Innovation: Vaccine Development at Merck, Sharp, & Dohme, and Mulford, 1895–1995	Louis Galambos with Jane Eliot Sewell	https://doi.org/10.2307/2567303
1997	A Melancholy Scene of Devastation: The Public Response to the 1793 Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic	J. Worth Estes and Billy G. Smith, eds.	https://doi.org/10.2307/2568308
1998	Contagion and Confinement: Controlling Tuberculosis along the Skid Road	Barron H. Lerner	https://doi.org/10.2307/2568043
1999	Rheumatic Fever in America and Britain: A Biological, Epidemiological, and Medical History	Peter C. English	https://doi.org/10.2307/2675357
1999	Blood Saga: Hemophilia, AIDS, and the Survival of a Community	Susan Resnik	https://doi.org/10.2307/2674903
1999	Childhood’s Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880–1930	Evelynn Maxine Hammonds	https://doi.org/10.2307/2674838
1998	The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life	Nancy Tomes	https://doi.org/10.2307/2674834
1999	The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence: Introduced Infectious Diseases and Population Decline among Northwest Coast Indians, 1774–1874	Robert Boyd	https://doi.org/10.2307/2674950
1997	Quarantine! East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892	Howard Markel	https://doi.org/10.2307/2700471
2001	Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health	Keith Wailoo	https://doi.org/10.2307/2700738
2000	City of Plagues: Disease, Poverty, and Deviance in San Francisco	Susan Craddock	https://doi.org/10.2307/2700871
2001	Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown	Shah Nayan	https://doi.org/10.2307/3092438
2001	Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82	Elizabeth A. Fenn	https://doi.org/10.2307/3092365
2001	Malaria: Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States	Margaret Humphreys	https://doi.org/10.2307/3659830
2002	The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America	Gerald N. Grob	https://doi.org/10.2307/3660363
2002	Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations	Sharla M. Fett	https://doi.org/10.2307/3659659
2004	Water, Race, and Disease	Werner Troesken	https://doi.org/10.2307/3659360
2005	Plague and Fire: Battling Black Death and the 1900 Burning of Honolulu’s Chinatown	James C. Mohr	https://doi.org/10.2307/3660057
2005	Living with Polio: The Epidemic and Its Survivors	Daniel J. Wilson	https://doi.org/10.2307/4486011
2005	Fever of War: The Influenza Epidemic in the U.S. Army during World War I	Carol R. Byerly	https://doi.org/10.2307/4486169
2006	Fit to Be Citizens? Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879–1939	Natalia Molina	https://doi.org/10.2307/25094705
2006	Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines	Warwick Anderson	https://doi.org/10.2307/25094874
2006	State of Immunity: The Politics of Vaccination in Twentieth-Century America	James Colgrove	https://doi.org/10.2307/25094802
2006	Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge	Linda Nash	https://doi.org/10.2307/25094965
2007	Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492–1715	Paul Kelton	https://doi.org/10.2307/25095634
2007	Colonizing Leprosy: Imperialism and the Politics of Public Health in the United States	Michelle T. Moran	https://doi.org/10.2307/27694457
2008	Saving Sickly Children: The Tuberculosis Preventorium in American Life, 1909–1970	Cynthia A. Connolly	https://doi.org/10.2307/27694644
2008	Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative	Priscilla Wald	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/96.2.589
2008	Sex, Sin, and Science: A History of Syphilis in America	John Parascandola	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/96.3.876
2009	The Mosquito Crusades: A History of the American Anti-Mosquito Movement from the Reed Commission to the First Earth Day	Gordon Patterson	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/96.4.1231
2009	Infectious Fear: Politics, Disease, and the Health Effects of Segregation	Samuel Kelton Roberts Jr	https://doi.org/10.2307/jahist/97.1.204
2009	Picturing Medical Progress from Pasteur to Polio: A History of Mass Media Images and Popular Attitudes in America	Bert Hansen	https://doi.org/10.2307/jahist/97.1.215
2009	Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis	Jennifer Brier	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/97.2.579
2010	Mosquito Soldiers: Malaria, Yellow Fever, and the Course of the American Civil War	Andrew McIlwaine Bell	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/97.3.808
2011	Pox: An American History	Michael Willrich	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jar502
2011	Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry	Peter McCandless	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jar617
2011	A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America	Ernest Drucker	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas315
2012	American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic	Nancy K. Bristow	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas415
2011	Miraculous Plagues: An Epidemiology of Early New England Narrative	Cristobal Silva	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas351
2012	Plague, Fear, and Politics in San Francisco’s Chinatown	Guenter B. Risse	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas590
2012	American Sunshine: Diseases of Darkness and the Quest for Natural Light	Daniel Freund	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jat035
2012	Fevered Measures: Public Health and Race at the Texas-Mexico Border, 1848–1942	John Mckiernan-González	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jat137
2012	The Contagious City: The Politics of Public Health in Early Philadelphia	Simon Finger	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jat343
2013	Ship of Death: A Voyage That Changed the Atlantic World	Billy G. Smith	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jau369
2014	Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics	Harvard University Library Open Collections Program	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jav106
2015	Cherokee Medicine, Colonial Germs: An Indigenous Nation’s Fight against Smallpox, 1518–182	Paul Kelton	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaw033
2016	Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the History of Male Flight Attendants	Phil Tiemeyer	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaw105
2016	Disease, War, and the Imperial State: The Welfare of the British Armed Forces during the Seven Years’ War	Erica Charters	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaw202
2016	Driven by Fear: Epidemics and Isolation in San Francisco’s House of Pestilence	Guenter B. Risse	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaw412
2016	The End of a Global Pox: America and the Eradication of Smallpox in the Cold War Era	Bob H. Reinhardt	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaw298
2017	The Antivaccine Heresy: Jacobson v. Massachusetts and the Troubled History of Compulsory Vaccination in the United States	Karen L. Walloch	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jax061
2017	Influenza Encyclopedia: The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918–1919; A Digital Encyclopedia	University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jax164
2017	Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds: Science and the Yellow Fever Controversy in the Early American Republic	Thomas A. Apel	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jax199
2019	Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic	Richard A. McKay	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaz159
2019	Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans	Urmi Engineer Willoughby	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaz045
2020	To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle against HIV/AIDS	Dan Royles	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaac109
2020	The Province of Affliction: Illness and the Making of Early New England	Ben Mutschler	https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaac141