This pathbreaking volume explores the history of occupational safety and health in America from the late nineteenth century to the 1950s. Thirteen essays tell a story of the exploitation of workers as measured by shortened lives, high disease rates, and painful injuries. Scholars from a variety of disciplines examine the history of protection and compensation for injured workers, state and federal involvement, controversies over the dangers of lead, and the three emblematic industrial diseases of this century radium poisoning, asbestos-related diseases, and brown lung.

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Both an intellectual portrait of two important black social scientists and a broader history of race relations in Harlem, this work captures the vitality and confusion of post-war progressive politics in New York. Kenneth and Mamie Clark were influential academic activists and civil rights crusaders, and their Northside Center in Harlem was an important site of integrationist thought and practice. Reading outward from the Center's various trials and triumphs, the authors recast the story of the civil rights movement.

The role of public health services in America is generally considered to be the reduction of illness, suffering, and death. But what exactly does this mean in practice? At different points in history, professionals in the field have addressed housing reform, education about sex and illegal drugs, hospital and clinic care, gun violence, and even bioterrorism. But there is no agreement about how far public health efforts should go in attempting to modify behaviors seen as lifestyle choices, or whether the field's mandate extends to intervening in broader social and economic conditions.

The...