Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82

During the years when the Revolutionary War transformed thirteen former British colonies into a new nation, a horrifying epidemic of smallpox was transforming - or ending - the lives of tens of thousands of people across the American continent. This great pestilence easily surpassed the war in terms of deaths, yet because of our understandable preoccupation with the Revolution and its aftermath, it has remained virtually unknown to us. Elizabeth A. Fenn is the first historian to reveal how deeply Variola affected the outcome of the War of Independence, and why it caused a continental epidemic, affecting the lives of virtually everyone in North America from Florida to Alaska.