Diseased States

"This comparative study elucidates the contrasting philosophies between Britain and the US concerning the history of the state's role in public health, beginning with the outbreak of yellow fever in 1793, and how these differing approaches continued to inform modern-era policies on AIDS, SARS, and Ebola . . . Recommended."—CHOICE

"It is an achievement of McCoy's book, to open up the field for a systematic reconsideration of the ways of knowing, the styles of state action and the bureaucratic practices, with which outbreak control has shaped the idea of the modern state across and beyond specific diseases."—Social History of Medicine

"Charles McCoy’s Diseased States takes a sweeping view of the history of disease and epidemic response in Great Britain and the United States to investigate how and why individual countries develop different responses to disease outbreaks."—H-Net Reviews

"Diseased States is insightful, original, and a great reminder of how the pursuit of public health is not as beneficent as it might seem and not immune to the vices of the public itself."—Kenneth Kirkwood, associate professor of health studies at Western University

"A sophisticated comparative analysis of the differing responses to infectious diseases in Britain and the United States from the nineteenth century to the present, Diseased States is a significant contribution to the literature."—Magdalena Szaflarski, associate professor of sociology and scientist in the Center for AIDS Research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham