Black Death at the Golden Gate

The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague

David K. Randall

2019 • 304 pages

Ratings5

Average rating3.6

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 ten million lives worldwide.

To local press, railroad barons, and elected officials, such a possibility was inconceivable—or inconvenient. As they mounted a cover-up to obscure the threat, ending the career of one of the most brilliant scientists in the nation in the process, it fell to federal health officer Rupert Blue to save a city that refused to be rescued. Spearheading a relentless crusade for sanitation, Blue and his men patrolled the squalid streets of fast-growing San Francisco, examined gory black buboes, and dissected diseased rats that put the fate of the entire country at risk.

In the tradition of Erik Larson and Steven Johnson, Randall spins a spellbinding account of Blue’s race to understand the disease and contain its spread—the only hope of saving San Francisco, and the nation, from a gruesome fate.

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Jess

This isn't the easiest read given the current state of affairs, but it was a great one. Did you know that in the late 1800s, San Francisco was at the cusp of the bubonic plague, with a resurgence following the 1906 earthquake? This fast-moving, well-written, and engaging narrative nonfiction book covers its discovery, treatment, and mitigation along with the sentiment and politics around it. Consider this: Anti-Asian racism. Fragile male egos. Infighting among city, state, and federal authorities on public health matters. Fake news. Looks like not much has changed in the last 150 years. Also, I would say this one is NOT for the squeamish!

Just a cheerful book about the plague to round out my holiday reading.

In the early 1900s, plague visited California. It creeped in, set up shop in Chinatown in San Francisco, and proceeded to puzzle scientists as it would pick victims seemingly at random. Compounding their efforts to isolate a cause, local politicians staunchly refused to assist the scientists and frighten the residents. San Francisco was growing, California as a whole was growing, and it wouldn't do to frighten people, close borders, and basically anything sensible to combat the disease. Everything's fine in Ba Sing Se. It went about as well as expected.

It was an interesting read about a situation I hadn't heard of before. If the politicians in charge then had had their way, things might have turned out much worse for San Francisco, California, and the United States as a whole. I liked that the book profiled the rotating cast of doctors-in-charge and the many ways their efforts to control the disease were brought up short by everyone around them. We're apparently really good at burying our heads in the sand for the sake of personal convenience and never really learned important lessons from the past. Who knew.

I did think the book meandered a bit more than was necessary, which caused my attention to wander a bit. There was an extensive section about the California gold rush which, while relevant to explain California's development, wasn't necessarily relevant to the plague story being told. I like my sidebars and rabbit holes as much as the next person, but it made the story as a whole feel less cohesive.

Still, a super engaging read and interesting story about how politics and medical science can never seem to see eye-to-eye on anything.

December 26, 2022