Compelling Story Research Articles

Running Silver: Restoring Atlantic Rivers and their Great Fish Migrations

49 Anadromous salmon in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans are iconic species that have been the subjects of numerous natural science texts that narratively describe their common plight. Among my favorites is Bruce Brown’s Mountain in the Clouds: A Search for Wild Salmon. Reading this book is one reason that I became passionate about wild salmon conservation. However, there has been a gap in this narrative for the eastern United States, where Atlantic Salmon Salmo salar is only part of a mosaic of ocean-going species. Running Silver is an intriguing read that fills this void. The book weaves the story of the plight of Northwest Atlantic diadromous fish with source material as varied as Thoreau and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission management actions. Despite the diverse sources, this narrative achieves the author’s goal of explaining the demise of this complex of species while trying to restore biological and cultural awareness of what has been lost ... and could be restored. John Waldman’s passion and dedication to the sea run fish community (both the fish and the people) is apparent in each of the book’s 20 relatively short 10-20 page chapters. Although they are woven together into a compelling story, most of the chapters are largely independent, allowing easy reading in small doses. The text transitions between number heavy text needed to explain harsh facts of lost abundance and hectares of concrete that block Atlantic Ocean rivers to very personal narrative observations of fish and river systems. I particularly appreciated the frequent conversational text where Waldman related discussions and observations of river keepers, managers, and scientists. The reader feels as if they are at the table or the river’s edge. The first four chapters set the stage and describe the fish species and river systems of the Atlantic realm. Chapter 3, The Seasonal Parade, was a favorite. Waldman uses the annual sequence of migration to introduce the reader to both the primary diadromous species and some that may be better characterized as euryhaline wanderers. This chapter was concise yet nuanced in its description of diversity within and among diadromous fish in their ecology and habitat use. And who knew there were anadromous whitefish! Running Silver: Restoring Atlantic Rivers and their Great Fish Migrations BOOK REVIEW

Stories for change: development of a diabetes digital storytelling intervention for refugees and immigrants to minnesota using qualitative methods.

BackgroundImmigrants and refugees are affected by diabetes-related health disparities, with higher rates of incident diabetes and sub-optimal diabetes outcomes. Digital storytelling interventions for chronic diseases, such as diabetes may be especially powerful among immigrants because often limited English proficiency minimizes access to and affects the applicability of the existing health education opportunities. Community-based participatory research (CBPR), whereby community members and academia partner in an equitable relationship through all phases of the research, is an intuitive approach to develop these interventions. The main objective of this study was to develop a diabetes digital storytelling intervention with and for immigrant and refugee populations.MethodsWe used a CBPR approach to develop a diabetes digital storytelling intervention with and for immigrant and refugee Somali and Latino communities. Building on an established CBPR partnership, we conducted focus groups among community members with type II diabetes for a dual purpose: 1) to inform the intervention as it related to four domains of diabetes self-management (medication management, glucose self-monitoring, physical activity, and nutrition); 2) to identify champion storytellers for the intervention development. Eight participants attended a facilitated workshop for the creation of the digital stories.ResultsEach of the eight storytellers, from the Somali and Latino communities with diabetes (four from each group), created a powerful and compelling story about their struggles and accomplishments related to the four domains of diabetes self-management.ConclusionsThis report is on a systematic, participatory process for the successful development of a diabetes storytelling intervention for Somali and Latino adults. Processes and products from this work may inform the work of other CBPR partnerships.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-015-2628-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Smitten: From domestic bliss to domestic violence in the Cook Islands and the Timeline of Abuse

Abstract The Cook Islands is an archipelago of fifteen tiny islands scattered across an area of the Pacific that is equivalent in size to Western Europe but with only 13,500 inhabitants. This article describes and discusses the first research on domestic violence to have been conducted throughout the whole of the Cook Islands. Qualitative interviews were conducted on every inhabited island in the country. The participants were Cook Islands women who had been, or who still were, victims of domestic violence. The research aimed to discover whether there was domestic violence throughout the Cook Islands and to hear from the victims about their experiences. The research also had an overarching goal of ensuring that the victims’ voices were paramount, in order that they could be heard. In this article, the women tell their compelling stories and, despite the fact that the women come from several different generations and are on isolated islands, the results show that there are remarkable similarities in their stories. These similarities include the methods and types of abuse they experienced and their resultant psychosocial problems. Lastly, the results show that when the similarities in the women’s stories are synthesized and compared to existing, worldwide research, this leads to the theory of the Timeline of Abuse, which is published here for the first time.

Barry Eichengreen, Dwight H. Perkins, and Kwanho Shin, eds., From Miracle to Maturity: The Growth of the Korean Economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press for the Harvard Asia Center, 2012. 366 pp.

Barry Eichengreen, Dwight H. Perkins, and Kwanho Shin, eds., <i>From Miracle to Maturity: The Growth of the Korean Economy</i>. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press for the Harvard Asia Center, 2012. 366 pp.

Closed-Loop Turbulence Control: Progress and Challenges

Closed-loop turbulence control is a critical enabler of aerodynamic drag reduction, lift increase, mixing enhancement, and noise reduction. Current and future applications have epic proportion: cars, trucks, trains, airplanes, wind turbines, medical devices, combustion, chemical reactors, just to name a few. Methods to adaptively adjust open-loop parameters are continually improving toward shorter response times. However, control design for in-time response is challenged by strong nonlinearity, high-dimensionality, and time-delays. Recent advances in the field of model identification and system reduction, coupled with advances in control theory (robust, adaptive, and nonlinear) are driving significant progress in adaptive and in-time closed-loop control of fluid turbulence. In this review, we provide an overview of critical theoretical developments, highlighted by compelling experimental success stories. We also point to challenging open problems and propose potentially disruptive technologies of machine learning and compressive sensing.

Fu-Go: The Curious History of Japan's Balloon Bomb Attack on America

Near the end of World War II, in an attempt to attack the United States mainland, Japan launched its fu-go campaign, deploying thousands of high-altitude hydrogen balloons armed with incendiary and high-explosive bombs designed to follow the westerly winds of the upper atmosphere and drift to the west coast of North America. After reaching the mainland, these fu-go, the Japanese hoped, would terrorize American citizens and ignite devastating forest fires across the western states, ultimately causing the United States to divert wartime resources to deal with the domestic crisis. While the fu-go offensive proved to be a complete tactical failure, six Americans lost their lives when a discovered balloon exploded. Ross Coen provides a fascinating look into the obscure history of the fu-go campaign, from the Japanese schoolgirls who manufactured the balloons by hand to the generals in the U.S. War Department who developed defense procedures. The book delves into panic, propaganda, and media censorship in wartime. Fu-go is a compelling story of a little-known episode in our national history that unfolded virtually unseen.

Building a heaven on Earth: religion, activism, and protest in Japanese-occupied Korea

Why and how did Korean religious groups respond to growing rural poverty, social dislocation, and the corrosion of culture caused by forces of modernization under strict Japanese colonial rule (1910u1945)? Questions about religionAEs relationship and response to capitalism, industrialization, urbanization, and secularization lie at the heart of understanding the intersection between colonialism, religion, and modernity in Korea. Yet, getting answers to these questions has been a challenge because of narrow historical investigations that fail to study religious processes in relation to political, economic, social, and cultural developments. In Building a Heaven on Earth ,Albert L. Park studies the progressive drives by religious groups to contest standard conceptions of modernity and forge a heavenly kingdom on the Korean peninsula to relieve people from fierce ruptures in their everyday lives. The results of his study will reconfigure the debates on colonial modernity, the origins of faith-based socialactivism in Korea, and the role of religion in a modern world. Building a Heaven on Earth , in particular, presents a compelling story about thedetermination of the Young MenAEs Christian Association (YMCA), the Presbyterian Church, and the ChAE?ndogyo to carry out large-scale rural movements to form a paradiseon earth anchored in religion, agriculture, and a pastoral life. It is a transnational story of leaders from these three groups leaning on ideas and systems from countries, such as Denmark, France, Japan, and the United States, to help them reform political, economic, social, and cultural structures in colonial Korea. Th is book shows that these religious institutions provided discursive and material frameworks that allowed for an alternative form of modernity that featured new forms of agency, social organization, and the nation. In so doing, Building a Heaven on Earth repositions our understandings of modern Korean history.

Incorporate Compelling Stories Into Your Event

Special Events GaloreVolume 15, Issue 9 p. 4-4 Events That Raise Awareness Incorporate Compelling Stories Into Your Event First published: 18 August 2015 https://doi.org/10.1002/speg.30165Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume15, Issue9September 2015Pages 4-4 RelatedInformation

Maximizing the Divestment Price of a Privately Held Company

While several studies have demonstrated that there is a relative price difference between companies listed on the stock market and privately held enterprises, no academic study has addressed the question of how this private enterprise discount can be reduced and the proceeds from a divestment can be maximized. This research project has focused on the seller’s perspective in the takeover process in order to answer the following research question: What factors influence the ability of sellers to extract value when divesting a privately held target and how can these factors be optimized? Based on the existing knowledge base, the following key success factors have been determined to be the main elements of the divestment process to be studied: Increasing negotiation power by creating competition; Initiating the sales process under favourable market conditions; Selecting a group of bidders with the highest potential synergies; Inviting financial investors to the bidding process; Increasing transparency of target company information; Controlling information dissemination to potential bidders; Articulating a compelling value and growth story for each buyer; Optimizing the auction process used in the divestment; Overcoming price differences using deferred or conditional payments; and identifying and mitigating potential deal breakers. Typically, M&A advisors are hired by the owners of privately held companies in order to create a market for their illiquid asset. A survey-based study validating the perceived importance of the key success factors has been conducted in addition to multiple case studies, where specialized M&A advisors and their clients have participated. The study of five selected cases involving a privately held target company during and after the divestment process has produced results with high significance to other researchers and professionals involved in mergers and acquisitions. From multiple case studies, the best possible practices regarding the optimization of the key success factors has been derived and used to reappraise the existing knowledge base. While based on a systematic analysis of the data obtained, the research question has been answered, further studies with a larger sample will be necessary to generalize findings and to validate the theory developed.

"The City of the Hospital": On Teaching Medical Students to Write.

“The City of the Hospital” is a creative nonfiction writing workshop for medical students, which the author has conducted annually since 2002. Part of the required preclinical Narrative Medicine curriculum at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, this six-week intensive workshop includes close readings of literary works and in-class assignments that are then edited by fellow class members and rewritten for final submission. Over the years, students have produced a wide range of compelling essays and stories, and they describe the class as having an effect that lasts throughout their further medical training. This special section includes selected works from class members.

The power of storytelling in public relations: Introducing the 20 master plots

Storytelling has been part of human activity for thousands of years. Stories have the power to inform, persuade, elicit emotional responses, build support for coalitions and initiatives, and build civil society. This essay describes the 20 master story plots used throughout history, as well as the rhetorical, persuasive, and message design skills used to create compelling stories. The master plots and narrative techniques are advanced as important communication and academic skills to teach storytelling to professionals, and to explain narrative theory to public relations scholars. Emplotment, narrative theory, and Burkean identification and form, are contextualized as narrative tools, along with “master plots” from the professional writing literature.

“Snow Fall”-ing Special Collections and Archives

“Snow Fall” is a Pulitzer Prize winning, digital storytelling project produced by the New York Times. It represents the next step in long-form digital journalism. The web application tells a compelling story about the fate of sixteen skiers and snowboarders during an avalanche. The textual element of the story is wrapped in a slick interface with gently appearing and disappearing images, strategically positioned HTML5 video and image slideshows, maps, and 3-D visualizations. Its title, “Snow Fall,” has become a verb in the digital journalism world. Upon seeing “Snow Fall” and other similar projects, the authors started to make the connection between this form of storytelling and Special Collections. Special Collections are full of interesting, rich, and unique stories. Their digital representation, however, while widespread in systems such as ContentDM, can be lacking in sensory appeal. Because of this, the authors developed a “Snow Fall”-like application for a Special Collections’ exhibit, “Cradle of Coaches,” in the fall of 2013. In addition to this exhibit, they have developed two more using the same template. They feel that this is a new and exciting medium to tell the stories within special collections and archives, as well as general stories about libraries themselves.

Detecting seminal research contributions to the development and use of the global positioning system by reference publication year spectroscopy

The global positioning system (GPS) represents one of the most compelling success stories of technology transfer from defense laboratories and academia to the private sector. In this short report, we applied a quantitative analysis to identify landmark research contributions to GPS. This technique, reference publication year spectroscopy (RPYS), yielded key insights into early works that allowed for both the development and widespread use of GPS. In addition, using this approach to identify individual contributions of scientific excellence offers an opportunity to credit not only the research investigators, but also their corresponding affiliations and funding sources. Indeed, the findings from our analysis suggest that RPYS might serve as a powerful tool to substantiate the contribution of funding agencies, universities and institutes to research fields. We stress, however, that this method should not stand-alone for such purposes, but should be wedded with the knowledge and experience of subject matter experts.

A Swing and a Hit

A Swing and a Hit

Sustainability, Globalization, and the Mythic Power of Home

We humans are creatures of both reason and myth, for logic alone cannot tell us why we should find anything meaningful. We craft mythic narratives that frame how we address our challenges. Right now, we need a heroic myth for sustainability. Neither a “journey of discovery” nor a “triumph over evil” suffice. We must, instead, discover the heroism of living at home. Unfortunately, home is more compelling as a goal than as a story. Odysseus reclaimed his home, but the Odyssey ended abruptly when it was time to start living there. Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, though, proves that it is possible to tell a compelling story about life at home. While Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings may balance and subvert “the hero story with the gardener story,” as Loren Wilkinson suggested, Our Town omits the warrior’s quest altogether (Wilkinson 73). As such, this play deserves our careful attention. Wilder’s play is not an environmentalist tract, but presents a mythic structure of home that fits sustainability better than the mythic structures of journey or combat. This hearth myth can provide the foundation for a sustainable worldview as we try to fit ourselves to the limits of our planetary home. The myth of home, though, carries its own risks. It can degenerate into chauvinism or passivity. We must go beyond the rural localism of Our Town in order to match the home myth to our world of globalization and migration. Alberto Fuguet’s The Movies of My Life offers insight into how we can do this. Fuguet, the controversial leader of the McCondo literary movement that embraces American pop culture, tells the story of a diasporic young man piecing together his identity and rediscovering a sense of home. This essay will first examine the myth of home and Our Town. Next, it will explore the perspectives of some globalization theorists who will help us understand dimensions absent from Wilder’s play. Finally, we will see how a destabilized myth of home can still take narrative form by looking at Fuguet’s novel The Movies of My Life. By combining the lessons of Wilder and Fuguet, we can craft a sustainable myth of home for our globalized world.

YIVO and the making of modern Jewish culture: scholarship for the Yiddish nation

This book is the first history of YIVO, the original center for Yiddish scholarship. Founded by a group of Eastern European intellectuals after World War I, YIVO became both the apex of secular Yiddish culture and the premier institution of Diaspora Nationalism, which fought for Jewish rights throughout the world at a time of rising anti-Semitism. From its headquarters in Vilna, Lithuania, YIVO tried to balance scholarly objectivity with its commitment to the Jewish masses. Using newly recovered documents that were believed destroyed by Hitler and Stalin, Cecile Esther Kuznitz tells for the first time the compelling story of how these scholars built a world-renowned institution despite dire poverty and anti-Semitism. She raises new questions about the relationship between Jewish cultural and political work, and analyzes how nationalism arises outside of state power.

Offline: What is medicine's 5 sigma?

“A lot of what is published is incorrect.” I'm not allowed to say who made this remark because we were asked to observe Chatham House rules. We were also asked not to take photographs of slides. Those who worked for government agencies pleaded that their comments especially remain unquoted, since the forthcoming UK election meant they were living in “purdah”—a chilling state where severe restrictions on freedom of speech are placed on anyone on the government's payroll. Why the paranoid concern for secrecy and non-attribution? Because this symposium—on the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research, held at the Wellcome Trust in London last week—touched on one of the most sensitive issues in science today: the idea that something has gone fundamentally wrong with one of our greatest human creations. The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness. As one participant put it, “poor methods get results”. The Academy of Medical Sciences, Medical Research Council, and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council have now put their reputational weight behind an investigation into these questionable research practices. The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of “significance” pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale. We reject important confirmations. Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent, endpoints that foster reductive metrics, such as high-impact publication. National assessment procedures, such as the Research Excellence Framework, incentivise bad practices. And individual scientists, including their most senior leaders, do little to alter a research culture that occasionally veers close to misconduct. Can bad scientific practices be fixed? Part of the problem is that no-one is incentivised to be right. Instead, scientists are incentivised to be productive and innovative. Would a Hippocratic Oath for science help? Certainly don't add more layers of research red-tape. Instead of changing incentives, perhaps one could remove incentives altogether. Or insist on replicability statements in grant applications and research papers. Or emphasise collaboration, not competition. Or insist on preregistration of protocols. Or reward better pre and post publication peer review. Or improve research training and mentorship. Or implement the recommendations from our Series on increasing research value, published last year. One of the most convincing proposals came from outside the biomedical community. Tony Weidberg is a Professor of Particle Physics at Oxford. Following several high-profile errors, the particle physics community now invests great effort into intensive checking and re-checking of data prior to publication. By filtering results through independent working groups, physicists are encouraged to criticise. Good criticism is rewarded. The goal is a reliable result, and the incentives for scientists are aligned around this goal. Weidberg worried we set the bar for results in biomedicine far too low. In particle physics, significance is set at 5 sigma—a p value of 3 × 10–7 or 1 in 3·5 million (if the result is not true, this is the probability that the data would have been as extreme as they are). The conclusion of the symposium was that something must be done. Indeed, all seemed to agree that it was within our power to do that something. But as to precisely what to do or how to do it, there were no firm answers. Those who have the power to act seem to think somebody else should act first. And every positive action (eg, funding well-powered replications) has a counterargument (science will become less creative). The good news is that science is beginning to take some of its worst failings very seriously. The bad news is that nobody is ready to take the first step to clean up the system.

Book Review: Greening Health Care: How hospitals can heal the planet

Healthcare in America is undergoing many changes. From the Affordable Care Act (ACA), to electronic records, to an increasing awareness on the impact of facility design and management on patient and staff outcomes, the role of healthcare is being transformed both in clinical and in community settings. Although there has been increased awareness of the potential for healthcare to green their facilities and operations as part of these changes--particularly with the release of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for Health Care in 2011--making the case for why this is good for hospitals' mission and bottom line has been less coherent. Kathy Gerwig's Greening Health Care: How Hospitals Can Heal the Planet provides both an historical overview and a practical guide for the healthcare industry on how and why hospitals can green their operations, programs, and facilities.As Kaiser Permanente's Environmental Stewardship Officer and Vice President of Employee Safety, Health, and Wellness, Gerwig is an industry leader with over 20 years' experience in pioneering the greening of healthcare. This experience is reflected in the books' two objectives. First, it gives an historical overview of the origins of the green movement for healthcare, its key players, and the evolution of initiatives like the Healthy Hospitals Initiative and Practice Greenhealth, with special focus on the pioneering role of Kaiser Permanente. Second, the book aims to provide examples specific to healthcare on how hospitals have greened their operations and facilities, ranging from healthy food procurement, to hospital waste, to measuring and reporting. Each chapter begins with a personal example of Gerwig's experience in the topic to be discussed, followed by a justification of why the issue affects both environmental and human health, and finishes with examples and case studies of how Kaiser Permanente and others have addressed the topic.[Image omitted: See PDF.]The book begins with a compelling story of Gerwig's realization of the chemical hazards contained in the medical equipment in Kaiser's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) units in 2001, and the resulting realization of the need to address environmental concerns as part of Kaiser's healthcare mission. The rest of Chapter 1 gives an overview of the green healthcare movement, initiatives and key players, arguing that healthcare has both the responsibility and the potential to make a big environmental impact given their health without harm mandate and huge resource use in the United States. Chapter 2 continues this argument, focusing on why environmental sustainability is both good for healthcare's bottom line, such as saving millions in medical waste disposal costs, and necessary, such as dealing with power outages from hurricanes and other climate change weather events. Although Gerwig's overview of climate change and its health impacts will seem overly basic for those working in the green industry, it is clear that some of Gerwig's main audience--higher level hospital executives--still need convincing, and her argument is strongest when giving healthcare-specific examples, such as hospital outages in New York City during Hurricane Katrina. Chapter 3 focuses on the business case for Kaiser's Total Health approach that includes environmental sustainability, and gives an overview of Kaiser's tools, approaches and case studies of their economic savings from green initiatives. This chapter can be a bit confusing in Gerwig's switching back and forth between the historical narrative, Kaiser's approach, and current initiatives, but is strongest when explaining the impact of the ACA on healthcare and sustainability, or why LEED was not originally appropriate for healthcare.Chapters 4, 5, and 6 make strong arguments on why food, waste, and chemicals are important for both environmental and human health. Chapter 4 excels at linking the current health focus on obesity with the need for holistic food policies and programs in healthcare, and is particularly strong in citing the hazards of chemicals in food and packaging and the opportunity for healthcare to support organic and community supported agriculture. …

“You’re Going to Do What?” Challenges of Autoethnography in the Academy

This story presents three main challenges faced with creating an autoethnography as a dissertation at a prestigious university. These challenges include (a) finding the author’s voice, (b) negotiating university policies and procedures, and (c) addressing validity concerns for autoethnography. The resulting autoethnographic account captures vulnerable moments and incidents to produce an evocative story about becoming a pioneer. A fusion between social science and screenplay yields a compelling story where effects of reality and human experience come together. These struggles with university’s policies and creating a form of member-checking contribute to the field of “autoethnography” with regard to qualitative methodology. Embarking on the path less traveled while navigating the political system and bureaucracy gives hope to others seeking to publish and/or write their autoethnography.

Fevered Measures: Public Health and Race at the Texas-Mexico Border, 1848–1942 by John Mckiernan-González (review)

Reviewed by: Fevered Measures: Public Health and Race at the Texas-Mexico Border, 1848–1942 by John Mckiernan-González Julia Rodriguez John Mckiernan-González. Fevered Measures: Public Health and Race at the Texas-Mexico Border, 1848–1942. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012. xvi + 416 pp. Ill. $94.95 (cloth, 978-0-8223-5257-0), $26.95 (paper, 978-0-8223-5276-1). John Mckiernan-González’s Fevered Measures: Public Health and Race at the Texas-Mexico Border looks at the contested area surrounding the U.S.–Mexico border as a prism into the mix of biological, cultural, and political factors shaping the social experience of epidemics. There’s much to grapple with in this book. Mckiernan-González takes on this complex topic over a long period of time and from multiple vantage points. His study crosses numerous divides including political states, space, class, and public/private spheres. Running themes that will be of particular interest to historians of medicine include patient–doctor encounters; practices of inspection, quarantine, and exclusion; vaccination; and sociomedical topics such as race. Fevered Measures has a theoretical bent is rich with detail and compelling stories from the perspective of multiple actors. One of Mckiernan-González’s main goals is to explore how the history of public health sheds light on “the interplay of local and national identities” and in particular “the forging of ethnic identities at places where two nations staged and built their own changing identities” (p. 2). He introduces Mexican and Latino people to the historical narrative of U.S. medicine, and in so doing contributes to our understanding of the process of identity formation and definitions of citizenship. The book is organized chronologically, which enables a close reading of the border zone and movement within it over time. Relying on a comprehensive array of sources (some quite creative, such as people’s official complaints against public health officials), the book begins with the 1847–48 border wars through the yellow fever epidemic that ravaged the region in the 1880s. Chapter 2 focuses on quarantines of the 1890s; Mckiernan-González shows how both the U.S. and Mexican governments used public health campaigns to expand the power of the state. Chapter 3 looks at a smallpox outbreak among migrant laborers to Mexico and a vaccine research project. Chapter 4 examines the turn-of-the-century response to epidemics in the border region—leading to new methods of household inspection and quarantine—after the U.S. military occupation of Cuba and subsequent discovery of the yellow fever vector (with credit due to both Cubans and U.S. doctors). Chapter 5 examines the intersection of health and citizenship at a “quintessential crossroad” (p. 167): the El Paso/Juárez border crossing. Here medical and political debates played out, colored by rhetoric of race, labor, and control. Chapter 6 looks at Mexican approaches to public health during the Mexican Revolution (1910–20) and how it contributed to political clashes between the two countries. Finally, chapter 7 examines the period 1920–42, including a close examinations of the Bracero migrant labor program, the creation of segregated communities in border areas, emerging Pan-American health networks, and the beginning of public health activism at the local level. In a brief Epilogue, Mckiernan-González makes it clear that there’s something special about the borderlands that throws big social, political, cultural, and national issues (such as state-building, immigrant [End Page 136] control, and labor relations) into relief. He underscores how people’s daily lives could be affected through loss of access to jobs, housing, education, or even free movement. While the scope, analytical sophistication, and wealth of material in this book are breathtaking, almost encyclopedic, some readers might crave a stronger narrative. Yet, all will agree that Mckiernan-González demonstrates with abundant evidence how a close examination of the history of public health on the border is poised to shed new light on the intertwined history of health and immigration in a place that has been until recently overlooked or misunderstood. As Mckiernan-González states bluntly, “Mexicans, Mexican immigrants, and Mexican Americans should be included in the official...