Polio An American Story, David Oshinsky
Polio An American Story, David Oshinsky
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

Polio: An American Story

Author: David Oshinsky

Narrator: Jonathan Hogan

Unabridged: 14 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/14/2007

Categories: Nonfiction, History


Synopsis

Multiple New York Times Notable Book winner and University of Texas professor, David M. Oshinsky is a leading American political and cultural historian. Garnering the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in History, this comprehensive and gripping narrative covers all the challenges, characters, and controversies in America’s relentless struggle against polio. Funded by philanthropy and grassroots contributions, Salk’s killed-virus vaccine (1954) and Sabin’s live-virus vaccine (1961) began to eradicate this dreaded disease.

Reviews

Goodreads review by ALLEN on May 16, 2021

Did the 20th Century see any other disease like poliomyelitis? Unlike consumption or cholera, it was not the by-product of a poor and polluted society, but of a crowded and fairly clean one, which is why the most dangerous time for the disease was in summer, when children sometimes went from public......more

Goodreads review by Clif on January 22, 2009

My older brother died before I was born due to bulbar polio in 1949. As a result, my parents decided to try again so I can say I am here due to polio. Naturally this book caught my eye when I spotted in on a friend's bookshelf and reading it I discovered how little I knew about the disease and the pe......more

Goodreads review by Porter on March 23, 2020

This book was very interesting and enlightening. I wish I could spend more time writing a full review of it, but I've been working 10-12 hour days at work this past week and would rather read than write. But a few key points: 1) I learned a lot about FDR's role in the whole Polio issue. I knew that h......more

Goodreads review by Kressel on September 05, 2012

I know it’s become cliché, particularly in my reviews, to say that a history book reads like a novel, but this one really does, and not just a contemplative novel, but a page-turning drama. The protagonist is Dr. Jonas Salk and he and rival scientist Dr. Albert Sabin are in a race to conquer a truly......more