Goldberger's War - by Alan M Kraut (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

For fans of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Alan M. Kraut's Goldberg's War tells the story of one doctor's courageous journey to cure deadly diseases and epidemics.

Goldberger's War chronicles one of the U.S. Public Health Service's most renowned heroes--an immigrant Jew who trained as a doctor at Bellevue, became a young recruit to the federal government's health service, and ended an American plague. He did so by defying conventional wisdom, experimenting on humans, and telling the South precisely what it didn't want to hear.

Kraut shows how Dr. Goldberger's life became, quite literally, the stuff of legends. On the front lines of the major public-health battles of the early 20th-century, he fought the epidemics that were then routinely sweeping the nation--typhoid, yellow fever, and the measles. After successfully confronting (and often contracting) the infectious diseases of his day, in 1914 he was assigned the mystery of pellagra, a disease whose cause and cure had eluded the world for centuries and was then afflicting tens of thousands of Americans every year, particularly in the emerging "New South."

"Engrossing story of an American medical hero." --The New England Journal of Medicine

Review Quotes

"This book provides a remarkable snapshot of the application of epidemiologic principles to the enhancement public health in the United States in the first third of the 1900s. The author's linkage of the personal life of a "public health crusader" with his scientific discoveries make it a fascinating as well as instructive document." --American Journal of Epidemiology

"Engrossing story of an American medical hero." --The New England Journal of Medicine

"Inspiring, brilliantly researched and engagingly written. Anyone interested in public health, the politics of medicine, or the impact of Jewish immigrants on American life will savor this book." --Jonathan D. Sarna, author of American Judaism: A History

"Alan M. Kraut's fine tribute to him does equal justice in describing the early public health movement in this country, and the Southern political, cultural and economic climate that required change." --Jewish Book World

About the Author