Vaccine juxtaposes the stories of brilliant scientists with the industry's struggle to produce safe, effective, and profitable vaccines. It focuses on the role of military and medical authority in the introduction of vaccines and looks at why some parents have resisted this authority. Political and social intrigue have often accompanied vaccination--from the divisive introduction of smallpox inoculation in colonial Boston to the 9,000 lawsuits recently filed by parents convinced that vaccines caused their children's autism. With narrative grace and investigative journalism, Arthur...

As savory as any vegetable, as sweet as its fellow fruits, it inspires a cultlike devotion on all continents. The inimitable, versatile tomato has conquered the cuisines of Spain and Italy, and in America it is our most popular garden delicacy. Arthur Allen understands the spell of the tomato and he's our guide to its dramatic story.

He begins by describing in mouthwatering detail the wonder of a truly delicious tomato, and then introduces the man who prospected for wild tomato genes in South America and made them available to tomato breeders. The story of enslaved Mexican Indians in the...

Few diseases are more gruesome than typhus. Transmitted by body lice, it afflicts the dispossessed--refugees, soldiers, and ghettoized peoples--causing hallucinations, terrible headaches, boiling fever, and often death. The disease plagued the German army on the Eastern Front and left the Reich desperate for a vaccine. For this they turned to the brilliant and eccentric Polish zoologist Rudolf Weigl.

In the 1920s, Weigl had created the first typhus vaccine using a method as bold as it was dangerous for its use of living human subjects. The astonishing success of Weigl's techniques...