Before COVID, before AIDS, there was polio, a disease that ravaged communities across America during the mid-20th century seemingly at random, cruelly killing and crippling children most severely.
Polio: An American Story is historian David Oshinsky's thoroughly researched, eminently readable look at the polio epidemic in America of the mid-20th century. It was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2006, a distinction it deserved for not only exploring polio as a public health crisis, but also as a social phenomenon which left its imprint on American culture--perhaps most emblematically in the life of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The bulk of the book is devoted to the frantic--ultimately successful--efforts to isolate the virus and find a vaccine. This becomes increasingly a competition between two men, Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, competing for research dollars but also for victory in the court of public opinion.
For those who would like to contemplate the polio crisis through a different lens, we will also be considering the (so far) last novel of the great American novelist Philip Roth, Nemesis (2010), set in a Newark neighborhood during a terrifying polio outbreak in the summer of 1944.
Ample copies of Polio: An American Story are available in the New Books area on the 2nd floor of Main Library--or from our partner libraries. Fewer copies are available of Philip Roth's Nemesis. For assistance, please inquire at the Reader Services desk on the 2nd floor or call 847-448-8630.
Zoom link information will be sent to all registered participants the week before our meeting.
EVENT TYPE: | Virtual | Authors & Book Discussions |
TAGS: | virtual | Health | Book Discussion |
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