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THE GOSPEL OF GERMS

MEN, WOMEN, AND THE MICROBE IN AMERICAN LIFE

How Americans became aware of the existence of germs and how this awareness impacted their everyday lives is told in this illuminating medical/social history. Tomes (History/SUNY, Stony Brook) looks at how the germ theory, first articulated around 1870 meshed with prior theories about the spread of disease. Proponents of the new “gospel of germs” were able to build on the traditional methods of preventing disease advocated by earlier sanitarians: disinfection, water purification, plumbing, and ventilation. Around the turn of the century, attention shifted from sewer gas, contaminated water, and household dirt to other means by which germs are spread, such as coughing, sneezing, and sharing drinking cups. Tomes reveals how the antituberculosis crusade and the domestic-science movement educated Americans about dealing with these hazards; and by using trade journals, advertisements, and patent applications the author shows how entrepreneurs exploited the fear of germs to promote a host of new goods and services. Shorter skirts for women, vacuum cleaners, window screens, white-tiled bathrooms, refrigerators, paper cups, cellophane packaging—all trace their origins to the desire to create a disease-free environment. The author also illustrates how disease awareness can be a two-edged sword, stirring fear of those groups—immigrants, minorities’suspected of carrying disease and at the same time providing the impetus for improving their living and working conditions. The advent of antibiotics, however, gave rise to a generation confident of having won the war against infectious disease. As Tomes points out, that confidence is waning with threats such as HIV and other viruses, the re-emergence of killer tuberculosis, and the growing resistance of common microorganisms to once-powerful antibiotics; thus the study of the gospel of germs seems especially relevant today. Full of fascinating details of daily life, although there’s probably more about bathroom plumbing and toilets than most people ever wanted to know. (18 illustrations, not seen)

Pub Date: April 7, 1998

ISBN: 0-674-35707-8

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Harvard Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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