A top-notch addition to the popular topic of deadly diseases.
This engrossing story about Typhoid Mary relates the grim history of typhoid fever, which killed tens of thousands of Americans in the early 1900s.
The narrative opens in 1907, when Dr. Josephine Baker, a New York City medical inspector, and three police officers paid a visit on Irish immigrant Mary Mallon, later known as Typhoid Mary. Mallon was a healthy-looking, middle-aged cook suspected of carrying typhoid bacteria and infecting those she worked for, sometimes fatally. Chapters about finding and imprisoning Mallon alternate with those on typhoid, its symptoms, how it spread and how it was largely eradicated. Lively writing uses primary sources to relate well-chosen, sometimes-gruesome details about the disease and convey the personalities of Mallon, Baker and George Soper, a sanitary engineer who tracked down Mallon through her employment history. An unusually attractive design incorporates many photographs, such artifacts as posters and cartoons, and sidebars. More than a chronological account, this exploration pays tribute to the power of public health measures and raises questions about the ethics of protecting the public by quarantining someone like Mallon, who sued for her freedom.
A top-notch addition to the popular topic of deadly diseases. (timeline, source notes, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 12-16)Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62091-597-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Intrepid explorer Lourie tackles the “Father of Waters,” the Mighty Mississippi, traveling by canoe, bicycle, foot, and car, 2,340 miles from the headwaters of the great river at the Canadian border to the river’s end in the Gulf of Mexico. As with his other “river titles” (Rio Grande, 1999, etc.), he intertwines history, quotes, and period photographs, interviews with people living on and around the river, personal observations, and contemporary photographs of his journey. He touches on the Native Americans—who still harvest wild rice on the Mississippi, and named the river—loggers, steamboats, Civil War battles, and sunken treasure. He stops to talk with a contemporary barge pilot, who tows jumbo-sized tank barges, or 30 barges carrying 45,000 tons of goods up and down and comments: “You think ‘river river river’ night and day for weeks on end.” Lourie describes the working waterway of locks and barges, oil refineries and diesel engines, and the more tranquil areas with heron and alligators, and cypress swamps. A personal travelogue, historical geography, and welcome introduction to the majestic river, past and present. (Nonfiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-56397-756-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If Freedman wrote the history textbooks, we would have many more historians. Beginning with an engrossing description of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, he brings the reader the lives of the American colonists and the events leading up to the break with England. The narrative approach to history reads like a good story, yet Freedman tucks in the data that give depth to it. The inclusion of all the people who lived during those times and the roles they played, whether small or large are acknowledged with dignity. The story moves backwards from the Boston Tea Party to the beginning of the European settlement of what they called the New World, and then proceeds chronologically to the signing of the Declaration. “Your Rights and Mine” traces the influence of the document from its inception to the present ending with Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The full text of the Declaration and a reproduction of the original are included. A chronology of events and an index are helpful to the young researcher. Another interesting feature is “Visiting the Declaration of Independence.” It contains a short review of what happened to the document in the years after it was written, a useful Web site, and a description of how it is displayed and protected today at the National Archives building in Washington, D.C. Illustrations from the period add interest and detail. An excellent addition to the American history collection and an engrossing read. (Nonfiction. 9-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8234-1448-5
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
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