Pox (2011)

The book to read on vaccination as public health in practice, with all its force and friction. Willrich covers the smallpox epidemic that swept the United States from 1898 to 1904, when officials vaccinated people at gunpoint in the South, quarantined African Americans suspected of carrying the disease in detention camps, and sent squads into New York tenements to vaccinate residents by force. What makes it valuable is that it refuses to pick an easy side. The harsh measures saved lives, and the resisters' fears about safety, racial targeting and bodily integrity were not foolish. Few books explain as clearly why trust matters as much as the vaccine itself.