Full Description
This book explores the importance of public health for understanding the transformation of American power, both domestically and internationally, over the past century. Two pandemics Spanish Flu in 1918-1920 and Covid-19 in 2019-2021 provide the context for analysing the actions and responsibilities of the US government both domestically and internationally. It critically examines the provision of health as a public good in the context of the American Century the application of American power to achieve a democratic, just, and profitable world order under US leadership. By using these two major health crises as book-ends for extending the American Century rubric beyond its usual twentieth century periodisation, the book emphasises the central role that health has played in conceptions of security, state-market relations, and citizenship formation. It critically examines the ways in which race, gender, and class have shaped attitudes to and applications of public and global health as well as how the responses to the threat of disease have brought mixed results, often contradicting the stated goals of social improvement. By reconsidering the American Century through the lens of the political and social struggles surrounding public health, the book provides a unique analysis of US political and social history.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Gaetano Di Tommaso, Dario Fazzi, Giles Scott-Smith
Beyond Control of Local Authorities: The Spanish Influenza Epidemic and Federal Supervision of Public Health
Jonathan Chilcote
The United States in Two Pandemics: The American Century and the Costs of American Culture
Nancy K. Bristow
The Politics of Public Health: Disease and Medical Authority in 20th Century America
Naomi Rogers
From the 'Lung Block' to the 'China Virus': Public Health, Xenophobia and US Identity Formation over the American Century
Stefano Morello, Kerri Culhane
Oil, Progress, and Public Health in the Early 20th Century
Gaetano Di Tommaso
Simkins v. Cone and the Hospital Desegregation Movement in the Long Twentieth Century
Richard M. Mizelle, Jr.
Better Dead than Red, or Not? Nuclear Physics and Public Health at the Dawn of the Cold War
Dario Fazzi
Fighting the Cold War and Variola: The American Commitment to Smallpox Eradication
Bob H. Reinhardt
Brother's Brother Foundation in Costa Rica: A Case Study in Public-Private Partnerships and Global Health in the American Century
Sarah B. Snyder
AIDS and Reproductive Rights in the American Century
Emma Day
The Making of Entitled Consumers: Neoliberal Ideas in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003
Yifei Li
'Real Men Wear Masks': COVID-19 and the Crisis of American Masculinity
Olga Thierbach-McLean
Conclusion
Gaetano Di Tommaso, Dario Fazzi, Giles Scott-Smith
