Get Well Soon

December 19, 2016
Wright (It Ended Badly) adopts a lighthearted approach—with mixed results—to delivering sociologically oriented descriptions of history’s greatest epidemics, including bubonic plague, smallpox, typhoid, and polio. She expresses sympathy for abused victims of syphilis, who were shunned for having the disease; praises healers such as Father Damien of Molokai, who tended to the residents of Hawaii’s leper colony; and heaps scorn upon those who have viewed the symptoms of particular illnesses, such as tuberculosis, as fashionable. Wright treats generously even misguided attempts to ease suffering, as when she describes such superstitious treatments as the “exploding frog cure” for bubonic plague. But she has harsh words for Woodrow Wilson, who suppressed news about the Spanish flu in service of America’s WWI effort, and is even harsher to those who cause active harm, such as the anti-vaccine activists sabotaging herd immunity. Wright finds that in fighting epidemics, a strong leader matters; communities must choose compassion over stigma and fight the disease instead of people. Recognizing that something devastating could be right around the corner, Wright urges readers to heed history’s lessons and to be thankful for vaccines, hygiene, and antibiotics. Agent: Nicole Tourtelot, DeFiore & Co.

January 1, 2017
A lightweight history of plagues from an author who is "invested in this study...because I think knowing how diseases have been combatted in the past will be helpful in the future."Wright (It Ended Badly: Thirteen of the Worst Breakups in History, 2015) injects her persona throughout the book, using asides to assert her opinions and invite reader agreement. So we learn that poor John Snow, the hero who persuaded London authorities in the 1850s to turn off the Broad Street pump and thus save the neighborhood from cholera, was a boring fellow she would never want to spend time with. On the other hand, many of her heroes or things they did were "cool," a word that should have been banished from the text along with "fun." However, Wright has done her homework. She begins with a second-century plague during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, which was probably smallpox and no doubt contributed to Rome's eventual decline. The author then moves on to cover the more well-known horrors, including bubonic plague, smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis, polio, and leprosy. She also adds a chapter on the dancing plague of medieval times, which was unusual in that people treated the victims kindly and tried to help. The 20th century brought us Typhoid Mary and the Spanish flu of World War I. The flu was followed by the still-mysterious encephalitis lethargica (see Oliver Sacks' Awakenings). The midcentury brought the polio vaccine but also a plague by another name: lobotomy. Wright notes that there were 40,000 lobotomies in the U.S. from the 1930s through the 1970s. Many of the operations were performed by Walter Freeman, whom Wright justifiably vilifies for his tireless promotion of the surgery for all mental ills. The author saves the AIDS epidemic for an epilogue as a worst-case scenario of society's stigmatizing and blaming the victim, singling out the Reagan administration for its do-nothing approach. There's no question that Wright has covered a lot of medical territory with good information; if only she had curbed her enthusiasm to pontificate.

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December 1, 2016

Wright (It Ended Badly: Thirteen of the Worst Breakups in History) writes that we have been living in "an age of improbable luck" because we have not seen an outbreak of a disease that we don't know how to fight; core countries (her term for developing countries) have not had to battle diseases such as plagues that kill thousands of people. In this volume, Wright provides a historical overview of 13 diseases, including bubonic plague, smallpox, tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, and polio, that decimated populations. Along with a description of each disease, Wright includes tales about ways that society dealt with the outbreaks and those individuals who dedicated their lives to learning about the spread of the disease and to finding a cure. These were remarkable individuals who were selfless in their pursuits: Jonas Salk and polio, Oliver Sacks and encephalitis lethargica, and Father Damien, who ministered to lepers. VERDICT The author's prose is jaunty, lively, and filled with references to contemporary cultural history, making this work a well-researched page-turner. Readers will get an intense dose of history, written in a not-hard-to-swallow style.--Patricia Ann Owens, formerly with Illinois Eastern Community Colls., Mt. Carmel

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2017
Wright (It Ended Badly, 2015) ably moves from one gloomy-but-fun topic to another. With great cheer, she devotes chapters to such scourges as the bubonic plague, smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis, cholera, and leprosy. Polio paralyzed 39-year-old future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1921; it took 34 years before Dwight Eisenhower announced a program that would ensure all children would receive Jonas Salk's vaccine. It is notable that a famous Republican war hero president was desperately urging the American people to make free medical treatment available to its citizens, Wright notes tartly. She describes lobotomies as a plague induced by human stupidity, not disease. Beginning in 1935, surgeons started drilling holes in people's skulls and cutting into the brain's frontal lobes, most famously and horrifyingly in the case of President John F. Kennedy's sister, Rosemary. Wright closes with what she accurately calls absolutely horrific pictures of the effects of the diseases (for those who want them). This well-researched book is a disturbing, hard-to-put-down reminder that Mother Nature can be a fierce adversary.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)