Black Death at the Golden GateBlack Death at the Golden Gate
the Race to Save America From the Bubonic Plague
Title rated 0 out of 5 stars, based on 0 ratings(0 ratings)
Book, 2019
Current format, Book, 2019, First edition., Available .Book, 2019
Current format, Book, 2019, First edition., Available . Offered in 0 more formatsTraces the massive effort to contain an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1900 San Francisco, detailing how the process was complicated by virulent racism, pseudoscience, and political cover-ups. For Chinese immigrant Wong Chut King, surviving in San Francisco meant a life in the shadows. His passing on March 6, 1900, would have been unremarkable if a city health officer hadn't noticed a swollen black lymph node on his groin--a sign of bubonic plague. Empowered by racist pseudoscience, officials rushed to quarantine Chinatown while doctors examined Wong's tissue for telltale bacteria. If the devastating disease was not contained, San Francisco would become the American epicenter of an outbreak that had already claimed ten million lives worldwide. To local press, railroad barons, and elected officials, such a possibility was inconceivable--or inconvenient. As they mounted a cover-up to obscure the threat, ending the career of one of the most brilliant scientists in the nation in the process, it fell to federal health officer Rupert Blue to save a city that refused to be rescued. Spearheading a relentless crusade for sanitation, Blue and his men patrolled the squalid streets of fast-growing San Francisco, examined gory black buboes, and dissected diseased rats that put the fate of the entire country at risk. In the tradition of Erik Larson and Steven Johnson, Randall spins a spellbinding account of Blue's race to understand the disease and contain its spread--the only hope of saving San Francisco, and the nation, from a gruesome fate.
Title availability
About
Subject and genre
Details
Publication
- New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2019]
Opinion
More from the community
Community lists featuring this title
There are no community lists featuring this title
Community contributions
There are no quotations from this title
There are no quotations from this title
From the community