Sick from Freedom
African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction
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Narrated by:
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Gabriel Bush
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By:
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Jim Downs
About this listen
Bondspeople who fled from slavery during and after the Civil War did not expect that their flight toward freedom would lead to sickness, disease, suffering, and death. But the war produced the largest biological crisis of the nineteenth century, and as historian Jim Downs reveals in this groundbreaking volume, it had deadly consequences for hundreds of thousands of freed people.
In Sick from Freedom, Downs recovers the untold story of one of the bitterest ironies in American history - that the emancipation of the slaves, seen as one of the great turning points in U.S. history, had devastating consequences for innumerable freed people. Drawing on massive new research into the records of the Medical Division of the Freedmen's Bureau-a nascent national health system that cared for more than one million freed slaves - he shows how the collapse of the plantation economy released a plague of lethal diseases. With emancipation, African Americans seized the chance to move, migrating as never before. But in their journey to freedom, they also encountered yellow fever, smallpox, cholera, dysentery, malnutrition, and exposure. To address this crisis, the Medical Division hired more than 120 physicians, establishing some forty underfinanced and understaffed hospitals scattered throughout the South, largely in response to medical emergencies. Downs shows that the goal of the Medical Division was to promote a healthy workforce, an aim which often excluded a wide range of freed people, including women, the elderly, the physically disabled, and children. Downs concludes by tracing how the Reconstruction policy was then implemented in the American West, where it was disastrously applied to Native Americans.
The widespread medical calamity sparked by emancipation is an overlooked episode of the Civil War and its aftermath, poignantly revealed in Sick from Freedom.
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- The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History
- By: John M. Barry
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 19 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the winter of 1918, at the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision between modern science and epidemic disease.
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Great book but very disturbing...
- By Tim on 01-15-09
By: John M. Barry
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Women of the Blue & Gray
- By: Marianne Monson
- Narrated by: Caroline Shaffer
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Hidden among the photographs, uniforms, revolvers, and war medals of the Civil War are the remarkable stories of some of the most unlikely heroes: women. This audiobook brings to light the incredible stories of women from the Civil War that remain relevant to our nation today. Each woman's experience helps us see a truer, fuller, richer version of what really happened in this country during this time period.
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Style kills the stories
- By KHdeB on 01-12-21
By: Marianne Monson
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Dr. Benjamin Rush
- The Founding Father Who Healed a Wounded Nation
- By: Harlow Giles Unger
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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A revealing biography of Dr. Benjamin Rush - fiery signer of the Declaration of Independence, prominent physician, ardent politician, zealous social reformer, passionate humanitarian, and dedicated educator. Known primarily as America's most influential and leading physician, Rush was also among the first to call for the abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, free education and health care for the poor, slum clearance, citywide sanitation facilities, an end to child labor, and universal public education, among other causes.
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A Great Humanitarian
- By Jean on 10-08-19
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Bellevue
- Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital
- By: David Oshinsky
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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David Oshinsky, whose last book, Polio: An American Story, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution.
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Fascinating
- By Jean on 12-14-16
By: David Oshinsky
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City of Dreams
- The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York
- By: Tyler Anbinder
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 24 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Tyler Anbinder's story is one of innovators and artists, revolutionaries and rioters, staggering deprivation and soaring triumphs, all playing out against the powerful backdrop of New York City, at once ever changing and profoundly, permanently itself. City of Dreams provides a vivid sense of what New York looked like, sounded like, smelled like, and felt like over the centuries of its development and maturation into the city we know today.
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Even as a history, not engaging
- By Patrick Kelly on 12-03-16
By: Tyler Anbinder
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Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds
- Ebola and the Ravages of History
- By: Paul Farmer
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 22 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2014, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea suffered the worst epidemic of Ebola in history. The brutal virus spread rapidly through a clinical desert, where basic health-care facilities were few and far between. Causing severe loss of life and economic disruption, the Ebola crisis was a major tragedy of modern medicine. But why did it happen, and what can we learn from it?
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CRITICAL LISTENING for 2020!
- By Vin on 11-17-20
By: Paul Farmer
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The Strange Career of William Ellis
- The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire
- By: Karl Jacoby
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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To his contemporaries in Gilded Age Manhattan, Guillermo Eliseo was a fantastically wealthy Mexican, the proud owner of a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, a busy Wall Street office, and scores of mines and haciendas in Mexico. But for all his obvious riches and his elegant appearance, Eliseo was also the possessor of a devastating secret: He was not, in fact, from Mexico at all. Rather, he had begun life as a slave named William Ellis, born on a cotton plantation in Texas during the waning years of King Cotton.
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Fascinating Tale of Racial Passing
- By Steven Schuster on 06-10-16
By: Karl Jacoby
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Why?
- Explaining the Holocaust
- By: Peter Hayes
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Despite the outpouring of books, movies, museums, memorials, and courses devoted to the Holocaust, a coherent explanation of why such ghastly carnage erupted from the heart of civilized Europe in the 20th century still seems elusive even 70 years later. Numerous theories have sprouted in an attempt to console ourselves and to point the blame in emotionally satisfying directions - yet none of them are fully convincing.
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Outstanding book! A must read
- By Pierre on 11-13-21
By: Peter Hayes
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El Norte
- The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America
- By: Carrie Gibson
- Narrated by: Thom Rivera
- Length: 21 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Because of our shared English language, as well as the celebrated origin tales of the Mayflower and the rebellion of the British colonies, the United States has prized its Anglo heritage above all others. However, as Carrie Gibson explains with great depth and clarity in El Norte, the nation has much older Spanish roots - ones that have long been unacknowledged or marginalized. The Hispanic past of the United States predates the arrival of the Pilgrims by a century, and has been every bit as important in shaping the nation as it exists today.
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Chicken Noodle History
- By Jose on 10-30-19
By: Carrie Gibson
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American Psychosis
- How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System
- By: E. Fuller Torrey
- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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E. Fuller Torrey's audiobook provides an inside perspective on the birth of the federal mental health program. On staff at the National Institute of Mental Health when the program was being developed and implemented, Torrey draws on his own first-hand account of the creation and launch of the program, extensive research, one-on-one interviews with people involved, and recently unearthed audiotapes of interviews with major figures involved in the legislation. As such, this book provides historical material previously unavailable to the public.
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Devastating analysis on US mental health policy!
- By Kevin on 07-13-14
By: E. Fuller Torrey
What listeners say about Sick from Freedom
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jeanette Lenoir
- 06-06-23
Poignant, Revealing, Inhumanity of Whites
This is a must read for all those in the ongoing struggle for justice and true freedom. We must never forget the brutality inflicted upon the bodies of BIPOC, and continue to push ahead for Reparations and hopefully, healing. Europeans have committed the greatest sins and inhumanity the world has ever known, and must know.
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- Anonymous User
- 08-20-20
Fantastic history
This book sheds light on extremely important issues that still have an impact on today’s American society. Any serious American history scholar or healthcare professional would find this book mandatory.
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- Liz Kent
- 11-01-24
Annoying AF
The voice actor for this title apparently was not contracted to correctly pronounce the words in this book. A few simple clicks at YouTube would have given him the correct pronunciation for cholera, dispensary, inundated, and MANY MORE! It is extremely distracting to be periodically shouting at the actor with the correct pronunciation of words that were common in the 19th century. Too bad he was entirely unmotivated to do a adequate job reading this book, because the book itself is interesting.
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