An illustration of the coronavirus, created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov)
Over the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed daily life in the United States. With the rise and fall of infection rates, local governments have lurched from phase yellow to phase red and back again. Restaurants, shops, and businesses have shuttered their operations, theaters and museums have closed, schools and universities have shifted to online education, and professional athletes have competed in “bubbles,” cheered on by cardboard-cutout crowds.
To slow the spread of the virus, prominent medical experts such as Andrew Fauci and Deborah Birx have recommended a range of public health protocols. Most Americans have worn masks, washed hands, and stood six feet apart. They have even begun to speak with a new pandemic vocabulary, daily uttering phrases—social distancing, mitigation testing, long haulers—that would have elicited bewilderment not a few short months ago. From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration has permitted each individual state to develop its own strategic response. The results have been spotty. Some governors have refused to impose mask mandates. Others, in the face of significant political and economic pressure, have lifted restrictions on commerce and travel. In consequence, COVID-19 continues to spread and the death count continues to rise. As of December 17, 2020, more than 308,270 Americans with COVID-19 have died.[1]
As a resource for teachers working to historicize the present moment, and for the benefit of all readers interested in the histories of epidemics, quarantines, and related public health interventions, the Process staff has created the following index of book reviews published in the Journal of American History over the past fifty years. In keeping with the nature of the coronavirus, we have limited the index to histories of communicable diseases, excluding important works on cancer, for example, substance abuse, and other medical conditions. To maintain a narrow focus, we have also omitted many excellent titles in closely related subfields, including the histories of science, technology, and medicine; public health and health advocacy; cleanliness and sanitation; disability; death; and medical biography.
[1] Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
| 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 |
