An indelible portrait of an era … Smilios is not at her strongest when she tackles the science, but she still spins a lively, parallel account of the quest for a cure for TB … In an otherwise excellent book, there is a disappointing lack of transparency in Smilios’s note to readers, which claims that “all the accounts and scenes in the book — including quotes, thoughts and reactions — are based on oral reports” corroborated by written documentation … Despite this flaw, this is a book that deserves reading and remembering in our pandemic age.
