This social and cultural history of Civil War medicine and science sheds important light on the question of why and how anti-Black racism survived the destruction of slavery. During the war, white ...Northerners promoted ideas about Black inferiority under the guise of medical and scientific authority. In particular, the Sanitary Commission and Army medical personnel conducted wartime research aimed at proving Black medical and biological inferiority. They not only subjected Black soldiers and refugees from slavery to substandard health care but also scrutinized them as objects of study. This mistreatment of Black soldiers and civilians extended after life to include dissection, dismemberment, and disposal of the Black war dead in unmarked or mass graves and medical waste pits. Simultaneously, white medical and scientific investigators enhanced their professional standing by establishing their authority on the science of racial difference and hierarchy. Drawing on archives of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, recollections of Civil War soldiers and medical workers, and testimonies from Black Americans, Leslie A. Schwalm exposes the racist ideas and practices that shaped wartime medicine and science. Painstakingly researched and accessibly written, this book helps readers understand the persistence of anti-Black racism and health disparities during and after the war.
The discovery of radium by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898
eventually led to a craze for radium products in the 1920s until
their widespread use proved lethal for consumers, patients, and
medical ...practitioners alike. Radium infiltrated American culture,
Maria Rentetzi reveals, not only because of its potential to treat
cancer but because it was transformed from a scientific object into
a familiar, desirable commodity. She explores how Standard Chemical
Company in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania-the first successful commercial
producer of radium in the United States-aggressively promoted the
benefits of radium therapy and its curative properties as part of a
lucrative business strategy. Over-the-counter products, from
fertilizers to paints and cosmetics to tonics and suppositories,
inspired the same level of trust in consumers as a revolutionary
pharmaceutical. The radium industry in the United States marketed
commodities like Liquid Sunshine and Elixir of Youth at a time when
using this new chemical element in the laboratory, in the hospital,
in private clinics, and in commercial settings remained largely
free of regulation. Rentetzi shows us how marketing campaigns
targeted individually to men and women affected not only how they
consumed these products of science but also how that science was
understood and how it contributed to the formation of ideas about
gender. Seduced by Radium ultimately reveals how
innovative advertising techniques and seductive, state-of-the-art
packaging made radium a routine part of American life, shaping
scientific knowledge about it and the identities of those who
consumed it.
First-Generation Faculty of Color: Reflections on Research, Teaching, and Service is the first book to examine the experiences of racially minoritized faculty who were also the first in their ...families to graduate college in the United States. From contingent to tenured faculty who teach at community colleges, comprehensive, and research institutions, the book is a collection of critical narratives that collectively show the diversity of faculty of color, attentive to and beyond race. The book is organized into three major parts comprised of chapters in which faculty of color depict how first-generation college student identities continue to inform how minoritized people navigate academe well into their professional careers, and encourage them to reconceptualize research, teaching, and service responsibilities to better consider the families and communities that shaped their lives well before college.
In Twenty-Two Cents an Hour, Doug Crandell uncovers the harsh reality of people with disabilities in the United States who are forced to work in unethical conditions for subminimum wages with little ...or no opportunity to advocate for themselves, while wealthy CEOs grow even wealthier as a direct result. As recently as 2016, the United States Congress enacted bipartisan legislation which continued to allow workers with disabilities to legally be paid far lower than the federal minimum wage. Drawing on ongoing federal Department of Justice lawsuits, the horrifying story of Henry's Turkey Farm in Iowa, and more, Crandell shows the history of the policies that have led to these unjust outcomes, examines who benefits from this legislation, and asks important questions about the rise of a disability industrial complex. Exposing this complex—which is rooted in profit, lobbying, and playing on the emotions of workers' parents and families, as well as the public—Crandell challenges readers to reexamine how we treat some of our most vulnerable fellow citizens. Twenty-Two Cents an Hour forces the reader to face the reality of this exploitation, and builds the framework needed for reform.
The Picky Eagle explains why the United States stopped annexing territory by focusing on annexation's domestic consequences, both political and normative. It describes how the U.S. rejection of ...further annexations, despite its rising power, set the stage for twentieth-century efforts to outlaw conquest. In contrast to conventional accounts of a nineteenth-century shift from territorial expansion to commercial expansion, Richard W. Maass argues that U.S. ambitions were selective from the start. By presenting twenty-three case studies, Maass examines the decision-making of U.S. leaders facing opportunities to pursue annexation between 1775 and 1898. U.S. presidents, secretaries, and congressmen consistently worried about how absorbing new territories would affect their domestic political influence and their goals for their country.These leaders were particularly sensitive to annexation's domestic costs where xenophobia interacted with their commitment to democracy: rather than grant political representation to a large alien population or subject it to a long-term imperial regime, they regularly avoided both of these perceived bad options by rejecting annexation. As a result, U.S. leaders often declined even profitable opportunities for territorial expansion, and they renounced the practice entirely once no desirable targets remained. In addition to offering an updated history of the foundations of U.S. territorial expansion, The Picky Eagle adds important nuance to previous theories of great-power expansion, with implications for our understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international relations.
Presents a unique view of social problems and conflicts
over urban space from the cab of an
ambulance. While we imagine ambulances as a site for
critical care, the reality is far more complicated. ...Social
problems, like homelessness, substance abuse, and the health
consequences of poverty, are encountered every day by Emergency
Medical Services (EMS) workers. Written from the lens of a
sociologist who speaks with the fluency of a former Emergency
Medical Technician (EMT), Medicine at the Margins delves
deeply into the world of EMTs and paramedics in American cities, an
understudied element of our health care system. Like the public
hospital, the EMS system is a key but misunderstood part of our
system of last resort. Medicine at the Margins presents a
unique prism through which urban social problems, the health care
system, and the struggling social safety net refract and intersect
in largely unseen ways. Author Christopher Prener examines the
forms of marginality that capture the reality of urban EMS work and
showcases the unique view EMS providers have of American urban
life. The rise of neighborhood stigma and the consequences it holds
for patients who are assumed by providers to be malingering is
critical for understanding not just the phenomenon of non- or
sub-acute patient calls but also why they matter for all patients.
This sense of marginality is a defining feature of the experience
of EMS work and is a statement about the patient population whom
urban EMS providers care for daily. Prener argues that the
pre-hospital health care system needs to embrace its role in the
social safety net and how EMSs' future is in community practice of
paramedicine, a port of a broader mandate of pre-hospital health
care. By leaning into this work, EMS providers are uniquely
positioned to deliver on the promise of community medicine. At a
time when we are considering how to rely less on policing, the EMS
system is already tasked with treating many of the social problems
we think would benefit from less involvement with law involvement.
Medicine at the Margins underscores why the EMS system is
so necessary and the ways in which it can be expanded.
"Arming East Asia: Deterring China in the Early Cold War examines President Eisenhower's mutual security program in East Asia and explains how that administration worked to contain China. This ...historical chronicle offers insights and perspectives regarding how to address Sino-American tensions and maintain a free and open Asia-Pacific. Eric Setzekorn argues that President Eisenhower expanded and solidified the U.S. presence in East Asia through use of military aid and military advisory efforts in sharp contrast to the use of U.S. military forces by Presidents Truman, Kennedy and Johnson. In South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Southeast Asia (particularly in Thailand and South Vietnam), the United States spent billions of dollars and significant time developing local military forces. By the end of Eisenhower's two terms, a force of over 1.4 million Allied soldiers in East Asia had been trained, equipped, and often paid through American milit
What is the role of the ambulance in the American city? The prevailing narrative provides a rather simple answer: saving and transporting the critically ill and injured. This is not an incorrect ...description, but it is incomplete. Drawing on field observations, medical records, and his own experience as a novice emergency medical technician, sociologist Josh Seim reimagines paramedicine as a frontline institution for governing urban suffering.Bandage, Sort, and Hustle argues that the ambulance is part of a fragmented regime that is focused more on neutralizing hardships (which are disproportionately carried by poor people and people of color) than on eradicating the root causes of agony. Whether by compressing lifeless chests on the streets or by transporting the publicly intoxicated into the hospital, ambulance crews tend to handle suffering bodies near the bottom of the polarized metropolis. Seim illustrates how this work puts crews in recurrent, and sometimes tense, contact with the emergency department nurses and police officers who share their clientele. These street-level relations, however, cannot be understood without considering the bureaucratic and capitalistic forces that control and coordinate ambulance labor from above. Beyond the ambulance, this book motivates a labor-centric model for understanding the frontline governance of down-and-out populations.
The frequency and intensity of natural disasters-such as wildfires, hurricanes, floods, and storms-is on the rise, threatening our way of life and our livelihoods. Managing this growing risk will be ...central to economic and social progress in the coming decades. Insurance, an often confusing and unpopular tool, will be critical to successfully emerging from the effects of these crises. Its traditional role is to protect us from unforeseen and unanticipated risk, but as currently structured, insurance cannot adequately respond to these types of threats. How can we improve insurance to provide consistent and sufficient help following all disasters? How do we use insurance not just to help us recover, but also to help us prevent disasters in the first place? And how can insurance help us achieve broader social and environmental goals?Understanding Disaster Insurance provides an accessible introduction to the complexities-and exciting possibilities-of risk transfer markets in the U.S. and around the world. Carolyn Kousky, a leading researcher on disaster risk and insurance, explains how traditional insurance markets came to be structured and why they fall short in meeting the needs of a world coping with climate change. She then offers realistic, yet hopeful, examples of new approaches. With examples ranging from individual entrepreneurs to multi-country collaborations, she shows how innovative thinking and creative applications of insurance-based mechanisms can improve recovery outcomes for people and their communities. She also explores the role of insurance in supporting policy goals beyond disaster recovery, such as nature-positive approaches for larger environmental impact. The book holds up the possibility that new risk transfer markets, brought to scale, could help create more equitable and sustainable economies. Insurance and risk transfer markets can be a powerful tool for adapting to climate change, yet they are frequently misunderstood. Many find insurance confusing or even problematic and ineffective. Understanding Disaster Insurance is a useful guidebook for policymakers, innovators, students, and other decision makers working to secure a resilient future-and anyone affected by wind, fire, rain, or flood.
This nation's Cold War and Global War on Terror defense structures need an update.? U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century provides such a framework for the changed world we live in, offering a ...detailed roadmap that shows how the United States can field a war-winning fleet that can also compete aggressively in peacetime against dangerous competitors unlike any the nation has faced before. Brent Sadler presents a compelling new strategy and organizing approach that he calls naval statecraft, which acknowledges the centrality and importance of the maritime domain. While similar in scale and scope to Cold War containment strategies against the Soviets, naval statecraft is much more.?It must be to challenge China's involvement in global supply chains, which gives that country significant financial heft and influence around the world.? Unlike what existed during of the Cold War, however, Sadler provides a unique vision for competing with China and Russia. Rather than simply calling for better coordinated U.S. diplomacy, military operations, and economic statecraft, Sadler argues for integrating the levers of national power coherently and in a sustainable way.? This is no small feat, and his approach is informed by a long career rich in working with various agencies of government, foreign militaries (including hostile ones), and our allies.? It is an approach imminently appropriate to our times but comes with a realization that the nation is not ready for the competition it faces from China and Russia. The book is a valuable contribution to the national debate over how best to respond to China's rise and Russia's antagonisms.
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