Discovering Tuberculosis

"Provides a deep historical account of why tuberculosis remains a major threat to global health, despite more than seventy years of efforts." —Salmaan Keshavjee, author of Blind Spot: How Neoliberalism Infiltrated Global Health

Tuberculosis is one of the world's deadliest infectious diseases, killing nearly two million people every year—more now than at any other time in history. While the developed world has nearly forgotten about TB, it continues to wreak havoc across much of the globe.

In this interdisciplinary study of global efforts to control TB, Christian McMillen examines the disease's remarkable staying power by offering a probing look at key locations, developments, ideas, and medical successes and failures since 1900. He explores TB and race in east Africa, in South Africa, and on Native American reservations in the first half of the twentieth century, investigates the unsuccessful search for a vaccine, uncovers the origins of drug-resistant tuberculosis in Kenya and elsewhere in the decades following World War II, and details the tragic story of the resurgence of TB in the era of HIV/AIDS. Discovering Tuberculosis explains why controlling TB has been, and continues to be, so difficult.

"Despite breakthroughs, our attempt to rein in tuberculosis continues to include setbacks, frustration, and failure. McMillen's important study shows why." —Booklist

"McMillen's impressive global history of TB shows why it is essential that TB workers and policymakers understand the histories of past control efforts and the local settings and political contingencies that shaped them." —Randall Packard, author of White Plague, Black Labor: Tuberculosis and the Political Economy of Health and Disease in South Africa

"[A] fascinating look at an old disease that is still very much with us." —Library Journal