Vaccine

The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver

Ranked #47 in Vaccination

Vaccine juxtaposes the stories of brilliant scientists with the industry's struggle to produce safe, effective, and profitable vaccines. It focuses on the role of military and medical authority in the introduction of vaccines and looks at why some parents have resisted this authority. Political and social intrigue have often accompanied vaccination—from the divisive introduction of smallpox inoculation in colonial Boston to the 9,000 lawsuits recently filed by parents convinced that vaccines caused their children's autism. With narrative grace and investigative journalism, Arthur... more

Reviews and Recommendations

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

Bill Gates CEO/Microsoft[On Bill Gates's reading list in 2011.] (Source)

Seth Mnookin Arthur is a wonderful writer. He covers the huge sweep of the story — he goes back to variolation and Edward Jenner and then takes it all the way through the development of vaccines, the nationalization of vaccine programmes, various social pressures, up to some of the more recent controversies. From my experience I know that when I’m trying to synthesize a huge amount of information, it becomes harder and harder to think about the writing itself — as opposed to just spitting everything out. But he does it in a way that at least I, as a reader, never felt it was just a document dump. For me,... (Source)


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