
A Good Time to Be Born
How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future
Perri Klass(Author)
WW Norton & Co (Publisher)
Published on 13. November 2020
Book
Hardback
384 pages
978-0-393-60999-8 (ISBN)
Description
Only one hundred years ago, even in the world's wealthiest nations, children died in great numbers-of diarrhea, diphtheria and measles, of scarlet fever and meningitis. Culture was shaped by these deaths; diaries and letters recorded them, poets and writers wrote about and lamented them. Not even the high and mighty could escape: presidents and titans of industry lost their children, the poor and powerless lost theirs even more frequently. The near-conquest of infant and child mortality is one of our greatest human achievements. Perri Klass pulls the story together for the first time, paying tribute to scientists, public health advocates, and groundbreaking women doctors who brought new scientific ideas about sanitation and vaccination to families. Thanks to their work, early death is now the exception, bringing about a massive transformation in society and freeing parents to worry a lot more about a lot less.
Reviews / Votes
"A Good Time to be Born is an ambitious, elegant meditation on what the doctor-writer Perri Klass describes as one of our greatest human achievements: a reduction in child mortality... [Klass] takes the most complex human patterns of all-history, medicine, politics, art-and knits them into something unique and beautiful... This is an important book for many reasons, but that Klass has given voice to the voiceless is perhaps the most significant." -- The New York Times Book ReviewMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 241 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 38 mm
Weight
611 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-393-60999-8 (9780393609998)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
10/2020
W. W. Norton & Company
€17.49
Available for download
Person
Perri Klass is professor of journalism and pediatrics at New York University, codirector of NYU Florence, and national medical director of Reach Out and Read. She writes the weekly column The Checkup for the New York Times.