Summary: One hundred years ago, a mysterious and alarming illness spread across America's South, striking millions of victims. No one knew what caused it or how to treat it. People were left weak, disfigured, insane, and in some cases, dead. Many were left to worry--would they be pellagra's next victim?
In this compelling book, award-winning science and history writer Gail Jarrow tracks this disease and highlights how doctors, scientists, and public health officials struggled to stop the epidemic, sometimes risking their own lives in the process. Illustrated with 100 archival photographs, Red Madness also includes a glossary, timeline, further resources, author's note, bibliography, and index. (Summary from back of the book and image from amazon.com)
My Review: There is much controversy over the Common Core
State Standards, and while I'll probably always mourn the loss of
teaching fiction freely, there has been a boom of fantastic nonfiction
because of it. This is one of those books--it's fascinating!
Imagine every year you get a horrible diarrhea,
drop weight, get weak, develop an embarrassing rash on your hands,
feet, face and chest, and on top of it all know that if you start
feeling crazy that you're probably close to death. This is real. This
did happen. And it took years for the U.S. to get a handle on it. This
book takes you through the process of finding answers, allowing you to
feel the frustration, and slow unveiling process of discovering the
truth.
My criticism of this book is my fear that
this will lose students in the drawn-out process to getting the answer.
There are lots of mixed messages, which the author intended because she
wanted the reader to experience the frustration and process of finding
the answers to the disease. While I understand the process and why the
author chose to do this, I don't know if middle school students will
keep with it. The ages recommended for this book are 10-14.
All that said, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would recommend it to plenty of people.
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Sum it up: A fascinating throw-back to a time when nutrition and disease were still rather unknowns to us.
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