American Health Crisis

This is an ambitious book, a major achievement, and a tour de force. It covers a range of topics, each of which has books devoted to it, and it shows the connections amongst this vast array. If we consider the ways in which everything from housing and infrastructure to food politics and climate change falls readily into the overall definition of health, as well, of course, as the experience of a global pandemic, health is surely the number one concern not only of the majority of Americans, but globally as well. American Health Crisis reflects an astonishing amount of research and will become a sourcebook for anyone interested in the politics of health in the United States.—Priscilla Wald, author of Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative This valuable book is a significant addition to American social and political history of the twentieth century. By seeking to integrate broad questions of environmental pollution, atomic energy, responses to pandemics, local and national politics Halliwell dives into the socio-biomedical responses to the changing world of the twentieth century. Halliwell adds a new perspective on what is sometimes needlessly seen as the narrow preserve of either scientists and medical actors or national political leaders. Local as well as national stories help us understand medicine and health policy as products of culture, geography, and science, not of the lab alone. Written in the midst of a pandemic where some political actors challenge some of our most cherished beliefs in science and the unlimited power of technology this deeply researched study of local and national health policy is a valuable contribution to American history writ large.––David Rosner, Ronald H. Lauterstein Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and History, Columbia University “In American Health Crisis, Martin Halliwell brilliantly and poignantly explores US responses—or lack thereof—to critical health episodes of the past century. Halliwell offers an expansive, illuminating, and highly readable and engaging tour of health crises from the vital years 1918 to 2018, as told through eighteen engaging case studies. Along the way, readers come to grasp how the books core concepts, Disaster, Poverty, Pollution, Virus, Care, and Drugs, intertwine to shape American healthcare delivery and its discontents. A prescient pre-history of America's troubled COVID-19 response, American Health Crisis brings to life the resiliences of health services and diverse communities across the United States, and the human dimensions of health crises that ‘can easily disappear in a blizzard of high-level statistics.’ American Health Crisis is a vital must-read for anyone who wishes to better understand how the United States provides care, or fails to do so, in times of urgent need.”—Jonathan M. Metzl, Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Medicine, Health, and Society, Vanderbilt University