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A review by thedizzyreader
Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague by David K. Randall
"There is not, and never has been, a noble generosity in California."
All hail Rupert Blue, white male savior of Chinatown, remarkable man of the time for noticing disease is no respecter of race... I got really bored reading about the heroic efforts of white male men in this book. It's amazing to me that the author can talk about Rupert Blue's later push for pasteurized milk without mentioning the USDA's first female scientist, Alice Catherine Evans. In fact the contributions of women in microbiology or any scientific field at the time aren't mentioned at all, at least not that I remember reading.
The author did a great job framing the issue in a political, historical and worldwide context, and obviously did a lot of research. And I can also count on one hand the number of times the author quoted from the Chinese Western Daily, as opposed to the numerous references to the San Francisco Chronicle and other white newspapers. All of this contributed to the feeling I was reading a lopsided account of history, one in which I rarely heard the voice of the people most impacted by the race to save America from the bubonic plague.
All hail Rupert Blue, white male savior of Chinatown, remarkable man of the time for noticing disease is no respecter of race... I got really bored reading about the heroic efforts of white male men in this book. It's amazing to me that the author can talk about Rupert Blue's later push for pasteurized milk without mentioning the USDA's first female scientist, Alice Catherine Evans. In fact the contributions of women in microbiology or any scientific field at the time aren't mentioned at all, at least not that I remember reading.
The author did a great job framing the issue in a political, historical and worldwide context, and obviously did a lot of research. And I can also count on one hand the number of times the author quoted from the Chinese Western Daily, as opposed to the numerous references to the San Francisco Chronicle and other white newspapers. All of this contributed to the feeling I was reading a lopsided account of history, one in which I rarely heard the voice of the people most impacted by the race to save America from the bubonic plague.