Building the worlds that kill us : disease, death, and inequality in American history / David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz.

"Building the Worlds that Kill Us traces the historical development of health as a 'product' of industry, economic advance, globalization, and social inequality. Diseases of the past are emblematic of the changing physical, economic, and ideological realities of American culture at any moment. For example, the conventional wisdom holds that the classic infectious and communicable diseases of the nineteenth century-typhoid, cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis-were products of an urbanizing, industrializing society that jammed people into tenements, left them with outdoor plumbing, and polluted the water supply. But rather than products of an unavoidable physical environment created by an urbanizing, industrializing world, Rosner and Markowitz argue they are emblematic of American culture and its ideological and social values. How did these values determine that conditions for some could be sacrificed for the wealth of others? Inevitably, Americans were making social decision about who shall live and who shall die. Popular ideas of personal or community 'worthiness'-who were the 'truly' needy and who were 'unworthy' or 'undeserving'-shaped our ideas that disease was linked to morality, which in turn created institutions that served the wealthy and the poor, the immigrant and the native born American, the black and the white, indigenous populations and those of European backgrounds unequally. Health and disease are a lens through which to see our changing social order and the intellectual and physical landscape. From colonialism to industrialism, plastics to pollution, the authors chart the development of new diseases and occupational afflictions as they keep pace with an advancing America over four hundred years"-- Provided by publisher.