Epidemics in the modern world

by Joann P. Krieg

Epidemics and their effects on human populations have provided a literary theme extending from the Bible to Albert Camus's The Plague, yet this theme is significantly absent from the literature of the United States. Why? In this groundbreaking study, Joann P. Krieg uncovers the hidden concerns in the American psyche concerning epidemic diseases as she traces evidence of specific fears peculiar to the development of a national self-consciousness, especially with regard to nature in the New World. Beginning with the colonial era, ministers, politicians, and writers have downplayed, denied, or only obliquely alluded to such public miseries as smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, tuberculosis, and now AIDS, partly because of a fervent need to believe that only the old world of Europe is plague-ridden and corrupt. America, by contrast, is fresh and green, its people ever young and healthy. This attitude of denial affected even the greatest of American writers, some of whom - such as Charles Bro