Smell Detectives
An Olfactory History of 19th-Century Urban America (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $24.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Dana Brewer Harris
About this listen
What did 19th-century cities smell like? And how did odors matter in the formation of a modern environmental consciousness? Smell Detectives follows the 19th-century Americans who used their noses to make sense of the sanitary challenges caused by rapid urban and industrial growth. Melanie Kiechle examines nuisance complaints, medical writings, domestic advice, and myriad discussions of what constituted fresh air, and argues that 19th-century city dwellers, anxious about the air they breathed, attempted to create healthier cities by detecting and then mitigating the most menacing odors.
Medical theories in the 19th century assumed that foul odors caused disease and that overcrowded cities, filled with new and stronger stinks, were synonymous with disease and danger. But the sources of offending odors proved difficult to pinpoint. The creation of city health boards introduced new conflicts between complaining citizens and the officials in charge of the air. Smell Detectives looks at the relationship between the construction of scientific expertise, on the one hand, and "common sense" - the olfactory experiences of common people - on the other. Although the rise of germ theory revolutionized medical knowledge and ultimately undid this form of sensory knowing, Smell Detectives recovers how city residents used their sense of smell and their health concerns about foul odors to understand, adjust to, and fight against urban environmental changes.
The book is published by University of Washington Press.
©2017 Melanie A. Kiechle (P)2017 Redwood AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
-
Smell
- A Very Short Introduction
- By: Matthew Cobb
- Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 3 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our sense of smell - or olfaction as it is technically known - is our most enigmatic sense. It can conjure up memories, taking us back to very specific places and emotions, whilst powerful smells can induce strong feelings of hunger or nausea. In the animal kingdom smell can be used to find food, a mate, or a home; to sense danger; and to send and receive complex messages with other members of a species. Yet despite its fundamental importance in our mental life and in the existence of all animals, our scientific understanding of how smell works is limited.
By: Matthew Cobb
-
Smellosophy
- What the Nose Tells the Mind
- By: A.S. Barwich
- Narrated by: Chloe Cannon
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A pioneering exploration of olfaction that upsets settled notions of how the brain translates sensory information.
-
-
Does not accompany pdf document
- By ABreja Prime on 10-29-20
By: A.S. Barwich
-
Floating Coast
- An Environmental History of the Bering Strait
- By: Bathsheba Demuth
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first-ever comprehensive history of Beringia, the Arctic land and waters stretching from Russia to Canada, Floating Coast breaks away from familiar narratives to provide a fresh and fascinating perspective on an overlooked landscape. The unforgiving territory along the Bering Strait had long been home to humans - the Inupiat and Yupik in Alaska, and the Yupik and Chukchi in Russia - before Americans and Europeans arrived with revolutionary ideas for progress.
-
-
Beautiful and necessary
- By elisabethan on 02-08-22
By: Bathsheba Demuth
-
The War for the Common Soldier
- How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies
- By: Peter S. Carmichael
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How did Civil War soldiers endure the brutal and unpredictable existence of army life during the conflict? This question is at the heart of Peter S. Carmichael's sweeping new study of men at war.
-
-
A flowing historical narrative
- By Rick Lynch on 08-17-24
-
The Transcendentalists and Their World
- By: Robert A. Gross
- Narrated by: Paul Brion
- Length: 26 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Transcendentalists and Their World offers a fresh view of the thinkers whose outsized impact on philosophy and literature would spread from tiny Concord to all corners of the earth. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Alcotts called this New England town home, and Thoreau drew on its life extensively in his classic Walden. Concord was a community in ferment, whose small, ordered society was unsettled through the expansive forces of capitalism and democracy.
-
-
It’s not CON-chord!!
- By Lynn on 09-22-23
By: Robert A. Gross
-
The Great Influenza
- The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History
- By: John M. Barry
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 19 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the winter of 1918, at the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision between modern science and epidemic disease.
-
-
Great book but very disturbing...
- By Tim on 01-15-09
By: John M. Barry
-
Smell
- A Very Short Introduction
- By: Matthew Cobb
- Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 3 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our sense of smell - or olfaction as it is technically known - is our most enigmatic sense. It can conjure up memories, taking us back to very specific places and emotions, whilst powerful smells can induce strong feelings of hunger or nausea. In the animal kingdom smell can be used to find food, a mate, or a home; to sense danger; and to send and receive complex messages with other members of a species. Yet despite its fundamental importance in our mental life and in the existence of all animals, our scientific understanding of how smell works is limited.
By: Matthew Cobb
-
Smellosophy
- What the Nose Tells the Mind
- By: A.S. Barwich
- Narrated by: Chloe Cannon
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A pioneering exploration of olfaction that upsets settled notions of how the brain translates sensory information.
-
-
Does not accompany pdf document
- By ABreja Prime on 10-29-20
By: A.S. Barwich
-
Floating Coast
- An Environmental History of the Bering Strait
- By: Bathsheba Demuth
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first-ever comprehensive history of Beringia, the Arctic land and waters stretching from Russia to Canada, Floating Coast breaks away from familiar narratives to provide a fresh and fascinating perspective on an overlooked landscape. The unforgiving territory along the Bering Strait had long been home to humans - the Inupiat and Yupik in Alaska, and the Yupik and Chukchi in Russia - before Americans and Europeans arrived with revolutionary ideas for progress.
-
-
Beautiful and necessary
- By elisabethan on 02-08-22
By: Bathsheba Demuth
-
The War for the Common Soldier
- How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies
- By: Peter S. Carmichael
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How did Civil War soldiers endure the brutal and unpredictable existence of army life during the conflict? This question is at the heart of Peter S. Carmichael's sweeping new study of men at war.
-
-
A flowing historical narrative
- By Rick Lynch on 08-17-24
-
The Transcendentalists and Their World
- By: Robert A. Gross
- Narrated by: Paul Brion
- Length: 26 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Transcendentalists and Their World offers a fresh view of the thinkers whose outsized impact on philosophy and literature would spread from tiny Concord to all corners of the earth. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Alcotts called this New England town home, and Thoreau drew on its life extensively in his classic Walden. Concord was a community in ferment, whose small, ordered society was unsettled through the expansive forces of capitalism and democracy.
-
-
It’s not CON-chord!!
- By Lynn on 09-22-23
By: Robert A. Gross
-
The Great Influenza
- The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History
- By: John M. Barry
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 19 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the winter of 1918, at the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision between modern science and epidemic disease.
-
-
Great book but very disturbing...
- By Tim on 01-15-09
By: John M. Barry
-
At Home
- A Short History of Private Life
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.”
-
-
Bryson does it again
- By Robert on 10-15-10
By: Bill Bryson
-
The Butchering Art
- Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
- By: Lindsey Fitzharris
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.
-
-
Not one boring moment!
- By WRWF on 12-22-17
-
The Ghost Map
- By: Steven Johnson
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is a thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world.
-
-
It was okay until the end
- By Matthew Groom on 12-04-08
By: Steven Johnson
-
The Poisoner's Handbook
- Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
- By: Deborah Blum
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Poisoner's Handbook, Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime.
-
-
Fascinating book marred by production errors
- By Reagan Kelly on 03-02-10
By: Deborah Blum
-
Bellevue
- Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital
- By: David Oshinsky
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Oshinsky, whose last book, Polio: An American Story, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution.
-
-
Fascinating
- By Jean on 12-14-16
By: David Oshinsky
-
Pale Rider
- The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World
- By: Laura Spinney
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus travelled across the globe, exposing mankind's vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. As socially significant as both world wars, the Spanish flu dramatically disrupted - and often permanently altered - global politics, race relations, and family structures while spurring innovation in medicine, religion, and the arts.
-
-
A Predilection for Those in the Prime of Life
- By Cynthia on 02-12-18
By: Laura Spinney
-
The Wizard and the Prophet
- Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 18 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 40 years, Earth's population will reach 10 billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups - Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin.
-
-
Fantastic
- By BKATX on 01-26-18
By: Charles C. Mann
-
Burn Pits
- The Poisoning of America's Soldiers
- By: Joseph Hickman
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 3 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thousands of American soldiers are returning from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan with severe wounds from chemical war. They are not the victims of ruthless enemy warfare, but of their own military commanders. These soldiers, afflicted with rare cancers and respiratory diseases, were sickened from the smoke and ash swirling out of the "burn pits" where military contractors incinerated mountains of trash, including old stockpiles of mustard and sarin gas, medical waste, and other toxic material.
-
-
Great Book
- By Amazon Customer on 05-14-20
By: Joseph Hickman
-
Thomas Edison: A Captivating Guide to the Life of a Genius Inventor
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Duke Holm
- Length: 2 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thomas Edison was born into a hard-working but attentive family. He struggled in school and became deaf at an early age. Born on February 11, 1847, Edison would become, arguably, the best-known American inventor of all time. His invention of the light bulb was one of more than 1,000 patents he held during his lifetime. Others included the phonograph, the electrical grid, and motion pictures. His work changed the way we see and hear the world around us.
-
-
Understandable
- By Ezra on 04-14-18
-
The Secret History of the War on Cancer
- By: Devra Davis Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The War on Cancer was run by leaders of industries that made cancer-causing products and sometimes also profited from drugs and technologies for finding and treating the disease. Filled with compelling personalities and never-before-revealed information, The Secret History of the War on Cancer shows how we began fighting the wrong war, with the wrong weapons, against the wrong enemies, a legacy that persists to this day.
-
-
Silly Book
- By Adam Smith on 12-24-14
-
Toms River
- A Story of Science and Salvation
- By: Dan Fagin
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 18 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of New Jersey’s seemingly innumerable quiet seaside towns, Toms River became the unlikely setting for a decades-long drama that culminated in 2001 with one of the largest legal settlements in the annals of toxic dumping. A town that would rather have been known for its Little League World Series champions ended up making history for an entirely different reason: a notorious cluster of childhood cancers scientifically linked to local air and water pollution.
-
-
Toms River Resident
- By Beezie Reader on 04-22-13
By: Dan Fagin
-
The Remedy
- Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis
- By: Thomas Goetz
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1875, tuberculosis was the deadliest disease in the world, accountable for a third of all deaths. A diagnosis of TB - often called consumption - was a death sentence. Then, in a triumph of medical science, a German doctor named Robert Koch deployed an unprecedented scientific rigor to discover the bacteria that caused TB. Koch soon embarked on a remedy - a remedy that would be his undoing. When Koch announced his cure for consumption, Arthur Conan Doyle, then a small-town doctor in England and sometime writer, went to Berlin to cover the event.
-
-
thought-provoking
- By Jean on 07-06-14
By: Thomas Goetz
Critic reviews
"Extends the field of environmental history in new and fascinating directions." (Michael Rawson, author of Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston)
"A bottom-up history that is necessary to truly grasp the evolution of cities." (Martin V. Melosi, author of The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present)
Related to this topic
-
The Ghost Map
- By: Steven Johnson
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is a thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world.
-
-
It was okay until the end
- By Matthew Groom on 12-04-08
By: Steven Johnson
-
An American Plague
- The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793
- By: Jim Murphy
- Narrated by: Pat Bottino
- Length: 3 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In An American Plague, Jim Murphy tells the story of the 1793 yellow fever epidemic. Bizarre medical practices of the time are discussed, as well as popular historical figures, such as George Washington and Benjamin Rush, who were involved in finding a cure for this horrific outbreak. Pat Bottino's captivating narration adds appeal to this interesting historical tale.
-
-
Don't expect technical depth...
- By Ebird on 01-27-06
By: Jim Murphy
-
Pandemic
- Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond
- By: Sonia Shah
- Narrated by: Sonia Shah
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Interweaving history, original reportage, and personal narrative, Pandemic explores the origin of epidemics, drawing parallels between the story of cholera - one of history's most disruptive and deadly pathogens - and the new pathogens that stalk humankind today, from Ebola and avian influenza to drug-resistant superbugs.
-
-
You will probably enjoy "Spillover" more
- By serine on 03-01-16
By: Sonia Shah
-
Pox
- An American History
- By: Michael Willrich
- Narrated by: K. Todd Freeman
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the turn of the last century, a smallpox epidemic swept the United States. The age-old disease spread swiftly through an increasingly interconnected American landscape: from southern plantations to the immigrant neighborhoods of northern cities to far-flung villages on the edges of the American empire. In Pox, historian Michael Willrich offers a gripping chronicle of how the nation's continent-wide fight against smallpox launched one of the most important civil liberties struggles of the 20th century.
-
-
Best book on smallpox
- By Chris M. White on 09-07-21
By: Michael Willrich
-
Drinking Water
- A History
- By: James Salzman
- Narrated by: Lee Hahn
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When you turn on the tap or twist the cap, you might not give a second thought to where your drinking water comes from. But how it gets from the ground to your glass is far more complex than you might think. Is it safe to drink tap water? Should you feel guilty buying bottled water? Is your water vulnerable to terrorist attacks? With springs running dry and reservoirs emptying, where is your water going to come from in the future? In Drinking Water, Duke professor James Salzman shows how drinking water highlights the most pressing issues of our time.
-
-
Hard not to be affected by this book
- By Neuron on 11-16-13
By: James Salzman
-
The Great Influenza
- The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History
- By: John M. Barry
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 19 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the winter of 1918, at the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision between modern science and epidemic disease.
-
-
Great book but very disturbing...
- By Tim on 01-15-09
By: John M. Barry
-
The Ghost Map
- By: Steven Johnson
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is a thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world.
-
-
It was okay until the end
- By Matthew Groom on 12-04-08
By: Steven Johnson
-
An American Plague
- The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793
- By: Jim Murphy
- Narrated by: Pat Bottino
- Length: 3 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In An American Plague, Jim Murphy tells the story of the 1793 yellow fever epidemic. Bizarre medical practices of the time are discussed, as well as popular historical figures, such as George Washington and Benjamin Rush, who were involved in finding a cure for this horrific outbreak. Pat Bottino's captivating narration adds appeal to this interesting historical tale.
-
-
Don't expect technical depth...
- By Ebird on 01-27-06
By: Jim Murphy
-
Pandemic
- Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond
- By: Sonia Shah
- Narrated by: Sonia Shah
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Interweaving history, original reportage, and personal narrative, Pandemic explores the origin of epidemics, drawing parallels between the story of cholera - one of history's most disruptive and deadly pathogens - and the new pathogens that stalk humankind today, from Ebola and avian influenza to drug-resistant superbugs.
-
-
You will probably enjoy "Spillover" more
- By serine on 03-01-16
By: Sonia Shah
-
Pox
- An American History
- By: Michael Willrich
- Narrated by: K. Todd Freeman
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the turn of the last century, a smallpox epidemic swept the United States. The age-old disease spread swiftly through an increasingly interconnected American landscape: from southern plantations to the immigrant neighborhoods of northern cities to far-flung villages on the edges of the American empire. In Pox, historian Michael Willrich offers a gripping chronicle of how the nation's continent-wide fight against smallpox launched one of the most important civil liberties struggles of the 20th century.
-
-
Best book on smallpox
- By Chris M. White on 09-07-21
By: Michael Willrich
-
Drinking Water
- A History
- By: James Salzman
- Narrated by: Lee Hahn
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When you turn on the tap or twist the cap, you might not give a second thought to where your drinking water comes from. But how it gets from the ground to your glass is far more complex than you might think. Is it safe to drink tap water? Should you feel guilty buying bottled water? Is your water vulnerable to terrorist attacks? With springs running dry and reservoirs emptying, where is your water going to come from in the future? In Drinking Water, Duke professor James Salzman shows how drinking water highlights the most pressing issues of our time.
-
-
Hard not to be affected by this book
- By Neuron on 11-16-13
By: James Salzman
-
The Great Influenza
- The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History
- By: John M. Barry
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 19 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the winter of 1918, at the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision between modern science and epidemic disease.
-
-
Great book but very disturbing...
- By Tim on 01-15-09
By: John M. Barry
-
Bellevue
- Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital
- By: David Oshinsky
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Oshinsky, whose last book, Polio: An American Story, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution.
-
-
Fascinating
- By Jean on 12-14-16
By: David Oshinsky
-
Pale Rider
- The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World
- By: Laura Spinney
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus travelled across the globe, exposing mankind's vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. As socially significant as both world wars, the Spanish flu dramatically disrupted - and often permanently altered - global politics, race relations, and family structures while spurring innovation in medicine, religion, and the arts.
-
-
A Predilection for Those in the Prime of Life
- By Cynthia on 02-12-18
By: Laura Spinney
-
The Moth in the Iron Lung
- A Biography of Polio
- By: Forrest Maready
- Narrated by: Forrest Maready
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A fascinating account of the world’s most famous disease - polio - told as you have never heard it before. Epidemics of paralysis began to rage in the early 1900s, seemingly out of nowhere. Doctors, parents, and health officials were at a loss to explain why this formerly unheard-of disease began paralyzing so many children. Why did this disease start to become such a horrible problem during the late 1800s? Why did it affect children more often than adults? Why was it originally called teething paralysis by mothers and their doctors?
-
-
Root Cause
- By Circlekay1 Gulfport MS on 10-24-19
By: Forrest Maready
-
The Big Necessity
- The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters
- By: Rose George
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We prefer not to talk about it, but we should. Disease spread by waste kills more people worldwide every year than any other single cause of death. Even in America, nearly two million people have no access to an indoor toilet. Yet the subject remains unmentionable. Moving from the underground sewers of Paris, London, and New York (an infrastructure disaster waiting to happen) to an Indian slum where ten toilets are shared by 60,000 people, The Big Necessity breaks the silence, revealing everything that matters about how people do - and don't - deal with their own waste.
-
-
Utterly fascinating
- By Clayton on 03-31-19
By: Rose George
-
The Fever
- Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years
- By: Sonia Shah
- Narrated by: Maha Chehlaoui
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause célèbre for voguish philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono, and Laura Bush are only a few of the personalities who have lent their names - and opened their pocketbooks - in hopes of curing the disease. Still, in a time when every emergent disease inspires waves of panic, why aren’t we doing more to eradicate one of our oldest foes? And how does a parasitic disease that we’ve known how to prevent for more than a century still infect 500 million people every year, killing nearly 1 million of them?
-
-
Solid but not amazing account of malaria
- By S. Yates on 04-11-16
By: Sonia Shah
-
The Remedy
- Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis
- By: Thomas Goetz
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1875, tuberculosis was the deadliest disease in the world, accountable for a third of all deaths. A diagnosis of TB - often called consumption - was a death sentence. Then, in a triumph of medical science, a German doctor named Robert Koch deployed an unprecedented scientific rigor to discover the bacteria that caused TB. Koch soon embarked on a remedy - a remedy that would be his undoing. When Koch announced his cure for consumption, Arthur Conan Doyle, then a small-town doctor in England and sometime writer, went to Berlin to cover the event.
-
-
thought-provoking
- By Jean on 07-06-14
By: Thomas Goetz
-
The Famine Plot
- England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy
- By: Tim Pat Coogan
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this sweeping history, Ireland's best-known historian, Tim Pat Coogan, tackles the dark history of the Irish Famine and argues that it constituted one of the first acts of genocide. In what the Boston Globe calls "his greatest achievement", Coogan shows how the British government hid behind the smoke screen of laissez faire economics, the invocation of divine providence, and a carefully orchestrated publicity campaign, allowing more than a million people to die agonizing deaths and driving a further million into emigration.
-
-
Atrocities abound.
- By GMJ on 06-05-18
By: Tim Pat Coogan
-
The American Plague
- The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic That Shaped Our History
- By: Molly Caldwell Crosby
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1900, the U.S. sent three doctors to Cuba to discover how yellow fever was spread. There, they launched one of history's most controversial human studies. Compelling and terrifying, The American Plague depicts the story of yellow fever and its reign in this country - and in Africa, where even today it strikes thousands every year. With "arresting tales of heroism," it is a story as much about the nature of human beings as it is about the nature of disease.
-
-
Yellow Fever in Memphis
- By Kevin P Key on 04-13-20
-
Coal
- A Human History
- By: Barbara Freese
- Narrated by: Shelly Frasier
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The fascinating, often surprising story of how a simple black rock altered the course of history. Yet the mundane mineral that built our global economy, and even today powers our electrical plants, has also caused death, disease, and environmental destruction. In this remarkable book, Barbara Freese takes us on a rich historical journey that begins three hundred million years ago and spans the globe.
-
-
Uses Coal to push her Political Agenda
- By Kismet on 08-22-06
By: Barbara Freese
-
The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States
- By: Mark Fiege
- Narrated by: William Bahl
- Length: 19 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the dramatic narratives that comprise The Republic of Nature, Mark Fiege reframes the canonical account of American history based on the simple but radical premise that nothing in the nation's past can be considered apart from the natural circumstances in which it occurred. Revisiting historical icons so familiar that schoolchildren learn to take them for granted, he makes surprising connections that enable readers to see old stories in a new light.
-
-
Will surely listen to it many times over.
- By Thomas Lopez on 01-24-20
By: Mark Fiege
-
The Pandemic Century
- One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris
- By: Mark Honigsbaum
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu to the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 "parrot fever" pandemic, through the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last one hundred years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms.
-
-
Pretty good
- By Baz 12345 on 04-03-20
By: Mark Honigsbaum
-
Black Death at the Golden Gate
- The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague
- By: David K. Randall
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Chinese immigrant Wong Chut King, surviving in San Francisco meant a life in the shadows. His passing on March 6, 1900, would have been unremarkable if a city health officer hadn't noticed a swollen black lymph node on his groin - a sign of bubonic plague. Empowered by racist pseudoscience, officials rushed to quarantine Chinatown while doctors examined Wong's tissue for telltale bacteria. If the devastating disease was not contained, San Francisco would become the American epicenter of an outbreak that had already claimed 10 million lives worldwide.
-
-
Plague, Racism, Public Health..a toxic mix.
- By Steve Adams on 07-11-19
By: David K. Randall
What listeners say about Smell Detectives
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Roger
- 04-05-18
Fresh Approach to Cultural History
Kiechle quite rightly proclaims that she is helping to pioneer a new branch of history: sensory history. Sensory history focuses on how stimuli affect people’s senses. It is a form of cultural history, in that it explores the everyday influences on the lives of ordinary people and their responses to those stimuli. In the process, sensory history helps us understand better the culture and environment of the period studied.
Kiechle has started with the most difficult sense to study—that of smell. By their nature, most smells are evanescent, and everyday smells tend not to be mentioned or recorded. Even unpleasant smells, unless they become extreme, are rarely discussed.
Kiechle also points out that we have fewer words to describe smells than we do for our other sensory perceptions. In addition, smells are very difficult to measure and almost impossible to preserve. Therefore, to detect and track down a bad smell, time is of the essence. Public involvement is required at the time and in the vicinity of the smell.
For a historian to track down smells from two centuries past is a daunting job. Kiechle, however, has done a great job researching how and what people smelled and how they reacted to those smells. She has used sources such as official complaints, letters to the editor and court records to reveal the general, public reaction to stenches—what, at the time, was men’s domain. She has also ingeniously used depictions of everyday life in novels and home advice manuals to illustrate how women coped with smells in the home.
At the start of the period covered by the book, the prevailing wisdom, called miasma theory, was that foul odors actually caused diseases. Therefore, smells could be more than annoyances; they could be life-threatening. People responded to these smells by wearing nosegays or smoking cigars to try to mask the odors and by building parks and using ventilation to try to clean the air.
The Civil War, with its stenches of both battlefields and military encampments, brought urban smells to masses of people not previously exposed to them. This exposure, combined with the intensity of the smells, helped bring discussion of the dangers of smells, and the means to mitigate them, more into the open.
After the Civil War, rapid industrialization brought new and stronger smells, as well as the concentration of foul odors in industrial neighborhoods. Dealing with these new threats elicited the efforts of experts, and these experts struggled to get the authority to regulate smell producers.
The last half of the 19th century also saw the general acceptance of germ theory—that diseases are caused by microbes, not smells. That acceptance accelerated the importance of experts, and it also led to smells being more of a social, rather than a health, concern. Given improvements in transportation, the upper and middle classes were able to move away from smell producers and still commute to work. The neighborhoods around the industrial production of foul odors were left to the poor and racial and ethnic minorities. Kiechle calls this smell segregation.
The increasing importance of experts diminished everyday public involvement in combatting odors, a trend that Kiechle decries. While experts may be needed to identify the specifics of smells, on-the-spot sensing of odors is just as vital today as it was in the 18th century.
Therefore, cooperation between the public and the experts, rather than antagonism, is needed. Lack of public involvement can lead to odors being missed. Lack of respect for expertise can lead to science deniers, a phenomenon all too common these days.
Kiechle has done an admirable job both in breaking new ground in the study of history and in explaining the everyday worlds of the 19th century, much of which still pertains today.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 09-21-21
A Bit Dry
The reader's performance was dry and robotic, like she was reading a manual. The information was interesting, too bad the presentation wasn't.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!