Public Health in the United States: A Reading List

As the first university press in the South, UNC Press pioneered in tackling issues of the day through the honest, and sometimes gritty, lens of reality, in order to challenge the status quo in a historically diverse and complex region. Our association with the oldest public university in the nation inspires in us a commitment to bring new and established peer-reviewed research to academic and general audiences—notably recognized for our publishing on US and world history—a mission that informs all we do.

Get informed regarding the history of public health in the United States (as well as its impact globally) through the following selection of UNC Press titles. Request them at your library, or order directly via uncpress.org and receive a 30% discount on print format books during our American History Sale using promo code 01UNCP30.

Remaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers by Nancy Tomes
“A fluent and immensely readable chronology, minutely referenced, instructive and ruefully entertaining. . . . [The] last chapter is a particular tour de force, a virtuoso summary of our present circumstances as we find ourselves both far better off, healthwise, than we have ever been and yet somehow right back where we began.”—New York Times

Protecting America’s Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation
by Philip J. Hilts
“Hilt’s book forcefully captures the complexity and the drama of the government’s attempt to oversee the imperfect science of medical treatment. It is a genuinely important book, rich in history, accurate in detail, unflinching in analysis. Above all, it causes us to think differently about the FDA, which has so often served as a convenient whipping boy for frustrated constituencies across the political spectrum.”—Jerome Groopman, M.D., New Republic

All Health Politics Is Local: Community Battles for Medical Care and Environmental Health by Merlin Chowkwanyun
“A deeply engaging book that deserves a wide readership and demonstrates a promising scholarly trajectory for the author.”—Journal of American History

Health Freaks: America’s Diet Champions and the Specter of Chronic Illness by Travis A. Weisse
“An ambitious, wide-ranging survey of the American diet. Weisse explores both the fringes of dietary cultures and mainstream challenges to the ‘standard American diet’ in order to ask bigger questions about what drives American dietary fads and faddism.”—Rachel Louise Moran, University of North Texas

The Wild and the Toxic: American Environmentalism and the Politics of Health by Jennifer Thomson
“A concise, pointed, and sometimes provocative intervention into the history of environmentalism. . . . Thomson’s analysis is trenchant and convincing, and her book breaks new ground in its investigation of environmentalism and the discourse of health. . . . Incisive and well written, it is essential reading for historians and social scientists trying to understand the complex discourse that shapes our understanding of human and environmental health today.”—Journal of Social History

Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America by Thurka Sangaramoorthy
“Landscapes of Care is a timely and highly relevant ethnography that is well-suited for courses in medical anthropology, migration, rural studies, and public health. . . . [A] powerful—and much needed—ethnography of rural health and healthcare, and its relevance extends well beyond ‘the land that time forgot.’”—Medical Anthropology Quarterly

Ripples of Hope in the Mississippi Delta: Charting the Health Equity Policy Agenda by David K. Jones
“Jones’s book fills a glaring gap in health services research on place-based inequities. By drawing upon and synthesizing methodologies from a myriad of disciplines, Jones makes clear how equitable access to healthcare is insufficient for addressing population health inequities.”—Arrianna Marie Planey, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The End of a Global Pox: America and the Eradication of Smallpox in the Cold War Era
by Bob H. Reinhardt
“Offers a fresh perspective by uncovering original evidence and incorporating insights from the growing historiography of postwar international development politics.”—Environmental History