Customer Reviews

Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Short, sweet, and somewhat hilarious rendition for one of our better known epidemiological chapters in american history. I was taken aback by the negative comments of the other readers of this book and I am afraid I do not agree. Having a deep and abiding interest in epidemiology and public health as far as the deaf and disability communities are concerned, there is more than one way to approach a story like this. Probably the first time anyone has taken Mary's point of view on this whole fiasco.

Bourdain didn't mean for this to be a textbook on public health. It is a story about a cook, somewhat along the lines of a modern Chaucer (which is high praise from me, since I love Chaucer's viginettes about characters during the Middle Ages). I realized this going into this book, but perhaps others were disappointed thinking they were going to receive something delving into more of the history and less of an individual biography.

This book is worth the short time it takes to read it. It's one of those books that makes you snort with laughter, and then feel guilty about it since many people got sick and a few died from Mary's little forays into the hot and dirty kitchens of New York at the turn of the century. Bourdain explains how Mary must have seen this invasion of her privacy from what little information provided by her and those who knew her. It should not be surprising that she had a bit of a 'persecution complex'. With all of our emphasis on individual rights and protection from Big Brother, you would think more readers would understand Mary's feelings about her situation?

Bourdain certainly has a unique view for what happened. I think he shows immense talent and compassion, for presenting this story in a different way. If you want to read a textbook history or about emerging viruses, this is not for you. But if you enjoy historical books from a unique standpoint, and a sense of humor in writing about serious topics, this book is definitely a must-have. Bourdain does do research into the areas he is greatly interested in, such as America's obsession with food...the menus from that time period and the explanation about the use of all animal parts was enough to make me gag. Good grossology!

Karen Sadler,
Science Education,
University of Pittsburgh

This book adds much useful and interesting color to the history of Ms. Mary Mallon, the woman who became known as Typhoid Mary. Mr. Bourdain takes his experiences as a chef and extends them into imagining what life was like for Ms. Mallon. He also tries to look at circumstances from her perspective, rather than the authorities who hounded her.

If you don't know the story, you should be aware that Ms. Mallon was a cook. She was a poor, single Irish immigrant who had to depend on her own efforts to make her way. Apparently, she was an above average cook, because she had an easier time staying employed than most cooks of the wealthy did at that time.

In the early 1900s, typhoid fever was a common disease. About one in ten who contracted it died. There was no treatment for it. You just got very sick. Antiobiotics and vaccines eventually became available, but not until the 1940s.

Some people who have the disease never get very sick, but never totally get over it. They continue to carry the bacteria in their intestinal system. The discharge of that system can then cause healthy people to become ill if they ingest the bacteria in their water or food. Cooked food is not usually a source, but ice cream can be. Many of Ms. Mallon's diners fondly remembered her peach ice cream.

She was discovered as the possible source when a wealthy family in Oyster Harbor came down in typhoid in 1904. The investigator looked into the fact that the cook had disappeared. Checking her employment history with an agency, he found that every family she had cooked for during the past several years had experienced typhoid. A new scientific theory was developing that some people could be continuous carriers. He wanted to find her and test her blood.

He eventually found her cooking on Park Avenue for a family with typhoid in 1907. The book details the unpleasant way that he treated her. Eventually, she was arrested after a tussle with five policement following an afternoon of hiding in a privy. The samples confirmed that she was a carrier. The health department incarcerated her for several years. Due to the efforts of her attorney and favorable press coverage, the health department relented and let her out if she promised not to cook again.

That was a mistake. How else could she earn a living? Someone needed to provide her different employment and supervise her.

After five years, there was a tremendous outbreak of typhoid among the doctors, nurses and patients at a hospital for pregnant women and newborns. Yes, Ms. Mallone was the cook. She spent the rest of her life in isolation at a hospital on an island, and worked in a laboratory there. She was allowed day trips away from the hospital, so it wasn't totally awful. She left bequests totally $4650 when she died in 1938 from the money she saved while working in the laboratory. Ironically, her disease may have protected her from the worst of the Depression.

The best parts of the book detail what goes on in a busy kitchen, the psychology of how cooks think about patrons, and the role that cleanliness plays (or usually doesn't play) in all of this. I was particularly impressed by the argument that cooks (and chefs, apparently) always work sick. There is also a lot of intersting material on how cleanliness in the kitchens of the rich had become the rage around 1900.

You will get a clear sense of Ms. Mallon's frustration. She appears to have genuinely felt that she had done nothing wrong. From a civil liberties point of view, she was kept isolated under health odinances without so much as a court hearing. The book needed to explore the civil liberties issues more in order to make this a five star book. The book also would have benefited from a look at how else her case might have been better handled.

I was struck that there were only three confirmed deaths traced to her employment. I'm sorry that there were three, but for her notoriety I would have thought the number would have been much higher. Certainly, it was a matter of life and death whether or not she cooked for others.

What do you think should be done if someone has a communicable disease that cannot be treated? Would your answer change if you were the person who had that disease?

See all sides to find better solutions!

This slender volume is a lot like the sumptuous meals that were popular among the wealthy turn-of-the-last-century New Yorkers: it's rich and overstuffed. "Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical" by Anthony Bourdain is loaded with references to that milieu's passion for all things fancy, especially food, and how one woman, without intent or malice, sent a panic throughout it.

Mr. Boudain, a very successful chef in his own right, is the perfect chronicler of this saga. His sympathy/empathy for Mary (Typhoid Mary) Mallon is evident throughout the text. (His final gesture of burying a gift at her grave was very moving.) He understands Mary's territorial sprayings in the kitchen, and how she felt that no one had the right to prevent her from working in it. And although he feels for her, he is not callous to the havoc and tragedy she created.

There is also a little bit of a detective story here. And I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the first time Mary was tracked down and the last time. The limited range of the book is the only drawback. I felt as though I had read something that was part of a larger work. In gustatory terms, I felt I had eaten a tasty main course with some side dishes, but was denied the appetizer and dessert. Again, Mr. Bourdain's final farewell to Mary at the gravesite was moving, but sort of abruptly ended the story. But I'm nitpicking. "Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical" is a wonderful diversion.

Author Anthony Bourdain provides the reader with a quick 148 page story of Mary Mallon, known to history as Typhoid Mary. Mary worked as a cook in the New York City area at the turn of the 20th century and unwittingly spread typhoid germs to those she served, although she, herself, appeared healthy. Author Bourdain goes into detail as to how Mary was tracked down and fingered as the culprit in the spreading of typhoid. Mary strongly denied her role in the spreading of the germs to those she served. Mary spent the last years of her unhappy life on North Brother island located just north of Riker's Island in New York City. The author also provides us with living conditions in New York City at the turn of the 20th century.I had heard of Typhoid Mary and this quick read will fill you in with some very interesting details in her life. The author concludes the book with a visit he made to Mary's grave in the Bronx in 1973 in which he, himself a cook, left his first chef's knife at the base of Mary's stone behind the tall grass as a gift to her as he said, "from cook to cook." This book will also make you think about the cleanliness of restaurants you eat in today.

While I've utterly enjoyed Bourdain's offhand, conversational style in his earlier books (particularly Kitchen Confidential and Bone in the Throat), here it sounds too casual. For all his assertions in KC that he just wakes up and writes a bit, writing is a craft and this time out the author does not pay enough attention to it. Too bad -- the story (which was probably largely researched by others, according to the acknowledgments) is interesting, and Bourdain's take on it is fresh. But sloppy writing -- repeated words and phrases, cliches, etc. -- really slow down this short tome. If this were a dish, I doubt Bourdain would have let it out of his kitchen, and someone at Bloomsbury should have pointed this out.

In Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical, Anthony Bourdain combines his skills and experiences as a chef with his unique writing talents to bring to life an often feared individual. Mary Mallon a.k.a. "Typhoid Mary" was a cook not unlike Bourdain himself, thus he is especially qualified to speak on her behalf. Most other books regarding the subject matter are either epidemiological in nature, treating her as just another case history, or historical in nature, viewing her as just another in a long line of events and placing a vast gulf between the reader and Mary herself. Bourdain comes at it with a biographical bent. There is no science here. The author wants you to feel Mary's pain, her persecution (perceived or otherwise), her frustration with not being able to do the one thing she knew how to do in order to make a living, and Anthony does a wonderful job of it. It is a very quick read, but well worth it.

It just goes to show what someone with some desire to learn and a talent for writing can do. Tony Bourdain proves it yet again with his interesting and well-researched look at Typhoid Mary. Who knew she was a cook? I bet most people think she was a prostitute (I did). Bravo to Tony for having the ingenuity and the humility to do some top notch historical research here and produce a useful work of historical scholarship.

In this diminutive book (amounting to fewer than 150 pages), the robust Bourdain tells the stormy story of 'Typhoid Mary' Mallon. The author and subject, it becomes clear, are much alike. Both are cooks, iconoclasts, and outsiders. The personalities of the two resonate with one another throughout. For the most part, this is a charitable portrait of a misunderstood woman, but Bourdain also admits that Mary had a misanthropic side. In the later part of her life, knowing she was a carrier of salmonella typhi, she worked as a cook at a hospital for women and children! At the same time, she had been wronged by the system -- treated unfairly because of her gender, her immigrant status, and her station in life. Bourdain successfully gets inside Mary's mind, and those of the bureaucrats who hounded her. His speculations on the inner thoughts of the players in this drama feel accurate. The mystery of Typhoid Mary is energetically brought to life in this wonderful account set in early-1900's New York.

Bourdain's book is a quick, often entertaining read, but if you don't already know a great deal about Mary Mallon's time period (so that you can sift the book's bit of wheat from its abundant chaff) you'll be better off reading something by a real historian. Of course, Bourdain has never claimed to be one; dammit, Jim, he's a "cook," not a historian. Thus I can't fault him for cutting an anecdotal, simplified, cook's-eye-view swath through the complexities of the cultural and scientific past.

But I did find his self-satisfied style to be too rich for my taste; a little literary nouvelle cuisine would have suited my palate better. Bourdain comes across as just wa-a-a-ay too pleased with himself. I paid only six dollars for a remaindered copy of the book, so I don't feel cheated by what turned out to be an under-nourishing meal. But had I paid the original $20 list price for this little helping of authorial self-indulgence, I probably would.

I really like Anthony Bourdain's writing style. It's conversational and unpretentious. This is a great book if you don't know the story of Typhoid Mary; however, if you are already familiar with it and are looking for something in depth with lots of details, this might not be perfect.

I'm looking forward to reading more from Bourdain.