Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830-1910 by Richard J. Evans

A brilliantly written work of great analytical penetration. -- Gordon A. Craig, The New York Review of Books

A marvelous book, splendidly written, full of wit and anecdote, exuding scholarship and wisdom. -- New Scientist

A tremendous book, the biography of a city which charts the multifarious pathways from bacilli to burgomaster. -- Roy Porter, London Review of Books

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This book by an eminent social historian of Germany tells the story of the cholera epidemic in late nineteenth-century Hamburg. Using an excellent mixture of local politics, history of science, traditional political history, and demographics, Evans shows how the attempts of local politicians to resist pressure from Berlin during the years of unification led to thousands of deaths in Hamburg due to an outdated water system, while residents in bordering Altona were spared. The story shows the interaction of politics with the history of science and technology, as rival theories about cholera -- the environmental "miasmic" theory and the infectious disease theory advocated by Robert Koch in the Prussian ministry of health -- were debated. A state-of-the art work of historiography that's also a gripping read, written in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic. It's really too bad that the paperback went out of print