Reviews with content warning for Racism - The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis

The author excelled at explaining the public health crisis across several decades. Based off of interviews, this book reads more like fiction even though it packed with facts; the last half of the book is citations! I reflected on all the parallels with how public health officials handled Covid-19, knowing humans struggle to unite when faced with pathogens.

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moonbasket's review against another edition

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emotional sad tense slow-paced

5.0

I was appalled and inspired by the things I learned in this book. I am a young white man in the United States, so tuberculosis and segregation are things that have been taught to me as things "of the past." This book drove home the intergenerational impact of segregation and the difficulties Black people faced during integration. It was visceral and poignant. As good stories do, it allowed me to more easily empathize with the women of the history and so I learned their stories better.
The book also showed the raw truth of the final decades of tuberculosis in the United States. It is gruesome at times, but not gory. The author walks the line between the medical details and the human emotions of the situation that keeps things from being too technica or too gross.
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in civil rights history in the US or medical history or communicable disease. Tuberculosis may not kill people in the US anymore, but it kills millions of people around the world every year and many of their deaths are preventable by drugs that they don't have access to for one reason or another.

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ahuggingsam's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative sad tense slow-paced

3.0

Incredibly well written but ducked some starts for the books almost complete bingo card of graphic descriptions of desease bordering on body horror. it made it very hard for me to enjoy the book

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bookishcori's review against another edition

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emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

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pipbiz's review

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dark emotional informative inspiring medium-paced

5.0

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emmavardy2's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative inspiring sad medium-paced

5.0

An important book beautifully written. Telling stories of black women who worked as nurses in TB hospital. And the part they played in aiding the discovery of a cure for TB. The book also sets in context of black social history in US at the time. And tells personal stories of some of the patients, nurses and doctors.

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