Andrew M. Wehrman is an associate professor of history at Central Michigan University. A winner of the Walter Muir Whitehill Prize in Early American History, his writing has appeared in The New England Quarterly, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post.
His book The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution was published in 2022.
At Shepherd Wehrman tagged five of the best books to understand health and politics in the early United States. One title on the list:
The Province of Affliction: Illness and the Making of Early New England by Ben MutschlerRead about the other entries on the list.
While hundreds of books have been written on early New England, Ben Mutschler deftly paints a portrait of life in New England “with sickness at its center.” He thoroughly integrates family struggles over illness and the demands placed on local governments into the story of the social and political development of this region that has long valued public health even as it has also endured tragic circumstances.
--Marshal Zeringue
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