The American Plague tells the story of the yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee--one that would cost more lives than the Chicago fire, San Francisco earthquake and Johnstown flood combined--and, it is a narrative journey into Cuba and West Africa, where a handful of doctors would change medical history.

Yellow fever shaped the history of the United States. Slave ships brought the virus to the Western Hemisphere, and over the centuries, it would strike 500,000 Americans, killing 100,000. It attacked port towns and found its lifeblood in the Mississippi River. It touched states from Texas to Massachusetts, forcing the nation's capital from Philadelphia to Washington and precipitating the Louisiana Purchase. It paralyzed governments, halted commerce, quarantined cities and altered the outcome of wars.

In 1900, the United States, fresh from its victory over Spain, sent three doctors led by Walter Reed to Cuba to discover how this disease was spread. Camped on sprawling farmland just outside of Havana, they launched one of history's most controversial human studies. Two of the doctors would be infected; one would die. Two-dozen men--veterans of the Spanish-American War--would volunteer to be test subjects. But the virus would not be so easily conquered. It continued to kill the scientists attempting to control it, including several American physicians in West Africa, the virus' birthplace, where even today, yellow fever strikes thousands of people every year and threatens to return to the United States.

Tragic and terrifying, The American Plague beautifully depicts the story of yellow fever, and its reign in this country. A story that, in the end, is as much about the nature of human beings as it is the nature of disease.