Books by David Oshinsky
Polio: An American Story
by David Oshinsky
🏆 Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for History
The engrossing story of the race to find a polio vaccine, which combines clear science writing with meticulously researched history; its stories of researchers' rivalries, sensationalist reporting, and the gap between laboratory vision and the reality in the ward are just as relevant today as they were in 1930s America.
“What I find so impressive about this book is that Oshinsky really does cover the whole history of a disease but does so in a way that you never feel you’re getting a CliffsNotes version. It’s a pretty unwieldy topic: you could write an entire book just about the year the polio vaccine was rolled out, or what happened since then, or you could write a book, as Paul Offit did, just about the Cutter incident. All the way through Polio you feel like you are getting all the details you would want or need. To combine that much information in a way that was not only accessible and exciting and readable but also scientifically rigorous was a real, real accomplishment.” Read more...
Seth Mnookin, Science Writer
Interviews where books by David Oshinsky were recommended
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1
No Right to An Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era
by Jacqueline Jones -
2
Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power
by Jefferson Cowie -
3
Cuba: An American History
by Ada Ferrer -
4
Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America
by Nicole Eustace -
5
Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America
by Marcia Chatelain -
6
Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America
by Caleb McDaniel
Pulitzer Prize-Winning History Books
Pulitzer Prize-Winning History Books
Every year, the Pulitzer Prize jury awards $15,000 to a “distinguished and appropriately documented book on the history of the United States.” We’ve compiled a guide to the winning books since the turn of the millennium.
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1
Polio: An American Story
by David Oshinsky -
2
Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver
by Arthur Allen -
3
The Cutter Incident: How America's First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis
by Paul Offit -
4
Microbe Hunters
by Paul de Kruif -
5
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic
by Steven Johnson
The Best Vaccine Books, recommended by Seth Mnookin
The Best Vaccine Books, recommended by Seth Mnookin
The history of vaccines is fascinating, and we highly recommend all the books discussed in this interview with Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus and Professor of Science Writing at MIT. These are gripping reads that tell the story of vaccines, medicine’s greatest life-saver, and the risks people took to find them.
