Polio

An American Story

| 4.30 | 4,785 ratings and reviews

Recommended by Bill Gates, Seth Mnookin, and 2 others. See all reviews

Ranked #8 in Vaccination, Ranked #9 in Microbiology — see more rankings.

Here David Oshinsky tells the gripping story of the polio terror and of the intense effort to find a cure, from the March of Dimes to the discovery of the Salk and Sabin vaccines--and beyond. Drawing on newly available papers of Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin and other key players, Oshinsky paints a suspenseful portrait of the race for the cure, weaving a dramatic tale centered on the furious rivalry between Salk and Sabin. He also tells the story of Isabel Morgan, perhaps the most talented of all polio researchers, who might have beaten Salk to the prize if she had not retired to raise a... more
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Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of Polio from the world's leading experts.

Bill Gates CEO/MicrosoftInfluenced the decision that Melinda and I made to make polio eradication the top priority of the foundation, as well as my own personal priority. (Source)

Seth Mnookin What I find so impressive about this book is that Oshinsky really does cover the whole history of a disease but does so in a way that you never feel you’re getting a CliffsNotes version. It’s a pretty unwieldy topic: you could write an entire book just about the year the polio vaccine was rolled out, or what happened since then, or you could write a book, as Paul Offit did, just about the Cutter incident. All the way through Polio you feel like you are getting all the details you would want or need. To combine that much information in a way that was not only accessible and exciting and... (Source)

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