February 2025: The American Plague by Molly Caldwell Crosby

Over the course of history, yellow fever has paralyzed governments, halted commerce, quarantined cities, moved the U.S. capital, and altered the outcome of wars. During a single summer in Memphis alone, it cost more lives than the Chicago fire, the San Francisco earthquake, and the Johnstown flood combined.

In 1900, the U.S. sent three doctors to Cuba to discover how yellow fever was spread. There, they launched one of history's most controversial human studies. Compelling and terrifying, The American Plague depicts the story of yellow fever and its reign in this country—and in Africa, where even today it strikes thousands every year. With “arresting tales of heroism,” (Publishers Weekly) it is a story as much about the nature of human beings as it is about the nature of disease.

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Suggested Indie Bookstores:

• Novel (Memphis, TN)

• Square Books (Oxford, MS)

• Blue Cypress Books (New Orleans, LA)

• Parnassus Books (Nashville, TN)

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Favorite Quotes:

“Dust from the lime blew in the air bone colored and sifted fine as flour. There was no traffic to stir it up. No horses to kick dirt beneath their hooves. It rose and fell of its own energy, occasionally accompanied by the pitch of a mosquito’s wings.“

“It was the wet season, and rain fell every afternoon, sometimes twice a day, dimming the light In the lab. Steam rose from the railroad tracks in Camp Columbia as the first drops hit the hot metal. And as the storms passed, heading out to sea, lightning would play across the surface of the water, igniting the ceiling of blue-gray cloud cover.“

“It was with a bitter sense of irony that Memphians would one day learn the yellow fever epidemics that nearly destroyed their city, a city named for Memphis, Egypt, would be spread by Aedes aeygpti: the Egyptian mosquito.”

“Reed sat on the deck, again writing a letter to his wife, and watched Havana come into focus, smelling the salt, steam, and wet stone, and farther off, the scent of smoke, coffee and old hay. The harbor blazed with color: The flags of nations all over the world whipped in the breeze, white sails skimmed between steamers, and green treetops glowed against cobalt-colored mountains far in the distance.“

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Other Stuff I’m Into Right Now:

• Sarah Snook in The Picture of Dorian Gray on Broadway

• Amaro

• Coq a vin

• Mise en place

• The OC