Summary: Chronicles the story of the early 1900s typhoid fever epidemic in New York, providing details as to how its infamous carrier was ultimately tracked down and stopped.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* The name Typhoid Mary lives on, but those of George Soper, Sara Josephine Baker, and Mary Mallon are relatively unknown. In this thoroughly researched book, Jarrow tells their intertwined stories. Beginning in 1906, Soper, an engineer and chemist known as a "germ detective," tied several typhoid outbreaks to Mallon, an Irish cook who was a typhoid carrier. Baker, a public health doctor in New York City, led the Department of Health's efforts to test Mallon for the disease. Feisty, uncooperative, and apparently healthy, Mallon repeatedly resisted officials and never accepted that she had infected dozens of people, including several who died. After a dramatic opening scene in which Mallon flees from health officials, Jarrow backtracks to 1903, when Soper investigated a typhoid outbreak in Ithaca, New York. Here she introduces the disease, its consequences for the community, and the growing role of government in public health, topics she later develops more fully. The writing is lucid, well organized, and informative. The book's large format allows for excellent reproductions of the many period photos, prints, and documents. Readers who are curious about Typhoid Mary, including those who enjoyed Julie Chibbaro's historical novel Deadly (2011), will find this an absorbing account of what actually happened. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
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