While the current global pandemic has brought the topic of quarantine front and center, the practice of quarantine—and resistance to it—has a long and often contentious history in the United States, which Charles Vidich tracks and explores in his riveting new book, Germs at Bay: Politics, Public Health, and American Quarantine (Praeger, January 2021).
The novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 is only one of more than 87 new or emerging pathogens discovered since 1980 that have posed a risk to public health. While many may consider quarantine an antiquated practice, in reality it is often one of the only defenses against new and dangerous communicable diseases. Tracing the United States' quarantine practices through the colonial, postcolonial, and modern eras, Germs at Bay provides an eye-opening look at how quarantine has worked despite routine dismissal of its value..