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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another side to history!, December 12, 2001
This review is from: Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 (Hardcover)
If we think that America has never known an infectious epidemic other than the Great Influenza after World War I, we'd be wise to consider the smallpox pandemic that swept the length & breadth of the North American continent just as the Revolutionary fever did. Pox American: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 is a fascinating way to learn about the early years of our nation when cultures collided on this continent. Each chapter starts with a story of one man - a ship's captain exploring the Straits of Juan de Fuca or a New England volunteer in the Continental Army or a missionary riding the dusty Southwest trails. From these individual's stories we can see scope of the virus' reach. With pictographs, maps, charts & photographs, this author brings this contagion close to home! Sometimes the dread disease was an invisible passenger upon an unsuspecting carrier that would arrive in a tribe of otherwise healthy people & within weeks, the entire community would be dead. Sometimes it was intentionally sent forth by our wily forefathers to do their deadly work. Smallpox haunted our ancestors from coast to coast; from Russian promyshlenniki (hunters & traders) who first explored & then enslaved the residents of Alaska to America's breadbasket, where entire native communities of farmers & hunter-gatherers were wiped out in weeks to Hudson Bay, New Orleans, The South as well as Mexico City. Elizabeth Fenn writes: "The pestilence can teach us the ways in which other upheavels - native warfare, missionization, the fur trade, and the acquisition of horses and guns...reshaped human life on the North American continent. The movement of the virus from one human being to another shows us how people actually lived in the late eighteenth century. For despite the political, social, and racial boundaries of the day, people rubbed elbows." I cannot do justice to the scope & breadth of this author's research. Pox Americana is a compelling read, a dread-filled chronicle of another aspect of our story & Professor Elizabeth Fenn has written a rich & interesting story with a huge Notes Section, as befits a teacher of history!
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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Following the smallpox trail, January 27, 2002
This review is from: Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 (Hardcover)
I first read of the devastation that smallpox wrought on the Continental Army while reading David McCullough's terrific biography, "John Adams" and was lucky enough to have seen, subsequently, "Pox Americana" author Elizabeth Fenn delve more deeply into the topic on cable TV's C-Span "Booknotes." Professor Fenn has written a well-researched book on smallpox....one that is not only informative, but generally easily readable. This is really two books. The first half covers the trail of Variola (smallpox) transmission throughout the course of the American Revolution and in this first half, Ms. Fenn writes with a prose that captures the reader with graphic details of the harshness of the disease itself, the suffering of those who were unlucky enough to have caught it, and the fear that became a constant in the lives of not only those who fought militarily but those in the civilian ranks as well. She gives us facts about how the smallpox incubates, how long it takes to run its course and how it was so easily transmittable. The reader can almost hear the agony of those inflicted and see the smallpox spread over their bodies. Ms. Fenn points to a tie-in (also in the McCullough book) that it is very likely that the British had tried to use the transmission of smallpox from their more disease-tolerant armies to the weaker American ones as an example of the first "germ warfare" thrust upon our newly independent country. The fact that George Washington had the timely sense (and good fortune) to inoculate his army during the winter of 1777, thus proving it to be a turning point in the war, is a remarkable story in itself....not one I'm sure that most students learn in school! The narrative in the second half of "Pox Americana" is weaker. Ms. Fenn, while continuing to do a superb in-depth job at following the disease around North America (mostly through Indian tribes), loses her descriptive appeal. The book now becomes more of an encyclopedia of numbers of deaths, which tribe could have passed it to which other one, and so on. At points we are inundated by the vast numbers of tribes and without the help of some elementary-looking maps, the reader can quite easily get lost. Still, the author has put forth her research at a compelling depth. I wonder now that Ms. Fenn has written this book, is there another book in her future which keeps the more fascinating Revolutionary War aspect and includes all different types of diseases that may have hit the colonists? She would be just the one to write it.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly recommended by nervegas.com, October 31, 2001
This review is from: Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 (Hardcover)
Pox is a truly scholarly work based on primary historical documents. It is obvious that it was a true labor of love by Prof. Fenn. The epidemic that Fenn studied is a particularly valuable in understanding a little known area of the American Revolutionary War (though her scope covers the entire North American Continet). Many know that the British had released smallpox on French alligned tribes seiging Ft. Pitt during the French Indian War. Less known was the great concern that General George Washington had about smallpox during the American Revolution. Elsewhere, it has been described that the main reason the seige of Boston lasted as long as it did was due to smallpox, and that the Continental Army was the first army in world history to require compulsory immunization - force-wide. Prof. Fenn paints an even darker picture. It could be said that the events with smallpox during the Revolutionary War was America's first biological emergency. She clearly documents cases that appear to be obvious attempts by the British to infect COntinental Forces with smallpox at Boston, and later in Virginia. The Virginia case is most appauling as the British turned freed slaves (loyalists) into their delivery vehicle. The failure to innoculate forces was cited as the main reason the Continental Army failed to take Canada. The army literally melted away, with replacements being taken down as soon as they arrived. Eventually, 1777, the Continental Army required that all new recruits go through innoculation stations before joining the army. The remainder of the book (2/3rds) describes the impact of smallpox on other communities in North America. The impact on the tribes around Vancouver at the time clearly documents how devistating disease can be to a civilization.
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