Polio: An American Story (edit title)

Amanda approved Timothy Gray’s request to combine 9 books, including Polio: An American Story, Friday, October 30 2009.

Timothy Gray edited the awards of Polio: An American Story Sunday, October 18 2009.

• Added an award: Pulitzer Prize
• Added category of an award: Pulitzer Prize History
• Added year of an award: Pulitzer Prize 2006

Timothy Gray edited the first sentence of Polio: An American Story Sunday, October 18 2009.

• SAN ANGELOSan Angelo in 1949 was pure West Texas, a county seat of 50,000 people between Abilene and the Mexican border at Del Rio, set in a vast landscape of farm fields, oil wells, and cattle ranches trimmed in barbed wire.

Timothy Gray submitted a request to combine 9 books, including Polio: An American Story, Sunday, October 18 2009.

Shelfari edited the description of Polio: An American Story Saturday, August 1 2009.

• Here David Oshinsky tells the gripping story of the polio terror and of the intense effort to find a cure, from the March of Dimes to the discovery of the Salk and Sabin vaccines--and beyond. Drawing on newly available papers of Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin and other key players, Oshinsky paints a suspenseful portrait of the race for the cure, weaving a dramatic tale centered on the furious rivalry between Salk and Sabin. He also tells the story of Isabel Morgan, perhaps the most talented of all polio researchers, who might have beaten Salk to the prize if she had not retired to raise a family. Oshinsky offers an insightful look at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which was founded in the 1930s by FDR and Basil O'Connor, it revolutionized fundraising and the perception of disease in America. Oshinsky also shows how the polio experience revolutionized the way in which the government licensed and tested new drugs before allowing them on the market, and the way in which the legal system dealt with manufacturers' liability for unsafe products. Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, Oshinsky reveals that polio was never the raging epidemic portrayed by the media, but in truth a relatively uncommon disease. But in baby-booming America--increasingly suburban, family-oriented, and hygiene-obsessed--the specter of polio, like the specter of the atomic bomb, soon became a cloud of terror over daily life. Both a gripping scientific suspense story and a provocative social and cultural history, Polio opens a fresh window onto postwar America.

Shelfari edited the contributors of Polio: An American Story Monday, July 27 2009.

• Added a contributor: David M. Oshinsky: (Primary Author)

Shelfari edited the first sentence of Polio: An American Story Thursday, July 16 2009.

• SAN ANGELO in 1949 was pure West Texas, a county seat of 50,000 people between Abilene and the Mexican border at Del Rio, set in a vast landscape of farm fields, oil wells, and cattle ranches trimmed in barbed wire.