
The Black Angels
The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis
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Narrated by:
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Gina Daniels
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By:
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Maria Smilios
About this listen
New York City, 1929. A sanatorium, a deadly disease, and a dire nurse shortage. So begins the remarkable true story of the Black nurses who helped cure one of the world’s deadliest plagues: tuberculosis.
During those dark pre-antibiotic days, when tuberculosis killed one in seven people, white nurses at Sea View, New York’s largest municipal hospital, began quitting. Desperate to avert a public health crisis, city officials summoned Black southern nurses, luring them with promises of good pay, a career, and an escape from the strictures of Jim Crow. But after arriving, they found themselves on an isolated hilltop in the remote borough of Staten Island, yet again confronting racism and consigned to a woefully understaffed facility, dubbed “the pest house” where “no one left alive.”
Spanning the Great Depression and moving through World War II and beyond, this story follows the intrepid young women, the “Black Angels,” who, for twenty years, risked their lives working under dreadful conditions while caring for the city’s poorest—1,800 souls languishing in wards, waiting to die or become “guinea pigs” for experimental (often deadly) drugs. Yet despite their major role in desegregating the NYC hospital system—and regardless of their vital work in helping to find the cure for tuberculosis at Sea View—these nurses were completely erased from history. The Black Angels recovers the voices of these extraordinary women and puts them at the center of this riveting story celebrating their legacy and spirit of survival.
Cover photo of nurses courtesy of NYCHHC/SeaView Archives
©2023 Maria Smilios (P)2023 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
One of St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s 40 New Books for Fall Reading
“Vivid…[An] indelible portrait of an era when this untreatable bane killed one American every 11 minutes…[The nurses’] tenacity in the face of harsh working conditions and pervasive racism is humbling and inspiring…Excellent…[A] book that deserves reading and remembering in the pandemic age.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Extraordinary…Written with an astute grasp of the medical facts surrounding TB, [the] book eloquently highlights the humanity of the nurses who were recruited from the segregated South to provide care for people with TB in the hospital when nobody else would…Smilios is a rare combination of rigorous scientist and an exquisite writer…[A] must-read for anyone in the TB field but also for those who wish to gain a better understanding of the factors that drive current health disparities.” —The Lancet
“Immensely rewarding…[A] confluence of histories, encompassing public health, urban development, race, class, and social upheaval…[Smilios] blends all of the threads she followed into a big blistering narrative that takes readers into the lives of an exceptional group of individuals whose personal stories are as compelling as the disease they confronted was deadly. Informative, enthralling, and sometimes appalling, this is American history at its best.” —Booklist, starred review
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In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of America's finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast.
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Great Narration!!!!!! Great story about 20 Century make writer who suffer with alcoholism. If you like this topic and want more
- By Pamela Abbey on 04-25-21
By: Olivia Laing
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Under the Big Black Sun
- A Personal History of L.A. Punk
- By: John Doe, Tom Desavia
- Narrated by: Exene Cervenka, Henry Rollins, full cast
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Under the Big Black Sun explores the nascent Los Angeles punk rock movement and its evolution to hardcore punk as it's never been told before. Authors John Doe and Tom DeSavia have woven together an enthralling story of the legendary West Coast scene from 1977 to 1982 by enlisting the voices of people who were there. The book shares chapter-length tales from the authors along with personal essays from famous (and infamous) players in the scene.
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A love song to the early punk days in LA.
- By Brenda on 07-09-16
By: John Doe, and others
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The Deep Places
- A Memoir of Illness and Discovery
- By: Ross Douthat
- Narrated by: Ross Douthat
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 2015, Ross Douthat was moving his family, with two young daughters and a pregnant wife, from Washington, DC, to a sprawling farmhouse in a picturesque Connecticut town when he acquired a mysterious and devastating sickness. It left him sleepless, crippled, wracked with pain - a shell of himself. After months of seeing doctors and descending deeper into a physical inferno, he discovered that he had a disease which, according to CDC definitions, does not actually exist.
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Excellent!!
- By D on 11-09-21
By: Ross Douthat
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What the Dead Know
- Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator
- By: Barbara Butcher
- Narrated by: Barbara Butcher
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Barbara Butcher was early in her recovery from alcoholism when she found an unexpected lifeline: a job at the Medical Examiner’s Office in New York City. The second woman ever hired for the role of Death Investigator in Manhattan, she was the first to last more than three months. The work was gritty, demanding, morbid, and sometimes dangerous—and she loved it. In What the Dead Know, she writes with the kind of New York attitude and bravado you might expect from decades in the field, investigating more than 5,500 death scenes, 680 of which were homicides.
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Didn’t Want The Book To End
- By Becky Sullivan on 06-29-23
By: Barbara Butcher
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A Mother's Reckoning
- Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy
- By: Sue Klebold
- Narrated by: Andrew Solomon, Sue Klebold
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill 12 students and a teacher and wound 24 others before taking their own lives. For the last 16 years, Sue Klebold, Dylan's mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong?
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Sad, but, Ultimately, Self-Serving
- By Gillian on 02-19-16
By: Sue Klebold
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Run Towards the Danger
- Confrontations with a Body of Memory
- By: Sarah Polley
- Narrated by: Sarah Polley
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In this extraordinary book, Sarah Polley explores what it is to live in one’s body, in a constant state of becoming, learning, and changing. Each of these six essays captures a piece of Polley’s life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person she is now but was not then. As Polley writes, the past and present are in a “reciprocal pressure dance.”
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Really Just a Book About Her Diffcult Moments
- By Andrew on 03-11-22
By: Sarah Polley
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The Distance Between Us
- A Memoir
- By: Reyna Grande
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In this inspirational and unflinchingly honest memoir, acclaimed author Reyna Grande describes her childhood torn between the United States and Mexico, and shines a light on the experiences, fears, and hopes of those who choose to make the harrowing journey across the border. Reyna Grande vividly brings to life her tumultuous early years in this “compelling...unvarnished, resonant” (BookPage) story of a childhood spent torn between two parents and two countries.
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opened my eyes to the beauty of our stories
- By Evelyn on 09-18-20
By: Reyna Grande
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All That Is Wicked
- A Gilded-Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind
- By: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Narrated by: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Edward Rulloff was a brilliant yet utterly amoral murderer—some have called him a “Victorian-era Hannibal Lecter”—whose crimes spanned decades and whose victims were chosen out of revenge, out of envy, and sometimes out of necessity.
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PLEASE STOP The Politicizing of Everything
- By Anonymous on 10-15-22
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The Lucky Ones
- A Memoir
- By: Zara Chowdhary
- Narrated by: Zara Chowdhary
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2002, Zara Chowdhary is sixteen years old and living with her family in Ahmedabad, one of India’s fastest-growing cities, when a gruesome train fire claims the lives of sixty Hindu right-wing volunteers and upends the life of five million Muslims. Instead of taking her school exams that week, Zara is put under a three-month siege, with her family and thousands of others fearing for their lives as Hindu neighbors, friends, and members of civil society transform overnight into bloodthirsty mobs, hunting and massacring their fellow citizens.
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Life under Modi
- By C. C. Kissinger on 08-09-24
By: Zara Chowdhary
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Prisoners of the Castle
- An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison
- By: Ben Macintyre
- Narrated by: Ben Macintyre
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend. But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape.
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Another chapter of history brought to life by a master
- By Steve on 09-28-22
By: Ben Macintyre
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The Last Slave Ship
- The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning
- By: Ben Raines
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed, the Clotilda became the last ship in history to bring enslaved Africans to the United States. The ship was scuttled and burned on arrival to hide the wealthy perpetrators to escape prosecution. Despite numerous efforts to find the sunken wreck, Clotilda remained hidden for the next 160 years. But in 2019, journalist Ben Raines made international news when he successfully concluded his obsessive quest through the swamps of Alabama to uncover one of our nation’s most important historical artifacts.
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Wow. Just Wow.
- By Pinkhippiechick on 02-11-22
By: Ben Raines
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Stony the Road
- Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow
- By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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A profound new rendering of the struggle by African Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counterrevolution that resubjugated them, as seen through the prism of the war of images and ideas that have left an enduring racist stain on the American mind.
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Valuable examination of Jim Crow and Rise of White Supremacy in America
- By William J Brown on 05-14-19
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Last Witnesses
- An Oral History of the Children of World War II
- By: Svetlana Alexievich, Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky
- Narrated by: Julia Emelin, Allen Lewis Rickman
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, Last Witnesses is Alexievich’s collection of the memories of those who were children during World War II. They had sometimes been soldiers as well as witnesses, and their generation grew up with the trauma of the war deeply embedded - a trauma that would change the course of the Russian nation. Collectively, this symphony of children’s stories, filled with the everyday details of life in combat, reveals an altogether unprecedented view of the war.
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And how many years to forget?
- By Darwin8u on 09-16-21
By: Svetlana Alexievich, and others
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Nobody Is Coming to Save You
- A Green Beret's Guide to Getting Big Sh*t Done
- By: Scott Mann
- Narrated by: Scott Mann, Mike Rowe
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In these divisive and distrustful times, the hardest skill and most important commodity in life and business is knowing how to connect deeply with other people. What are the secrets to moving reluctant people to action, in life or in business?
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Excellent Content and Quick Read
- By Chris G on 01-16-25
By: Scott Mann
What listeners say about The Black Angels
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- Kindle Customer
- 10-06-23
Great black history
I enjoyed reading about the accomplishments and achievements of my people, Black Americans, in spite of the obstacles before them. The author and narrator are commended in their excellent telling this story of great 20th century Americans.
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- Mellyg
- 02-03-24
loved it History unveiled again
Another story showing that Black Americans helped build, support and move this country forward despite all of the obstacles, challenges and difficulties . When you read about the struggles and treatment it is eye opening.
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- Amazon Customer Reverend
- 02-24-24
Making a Difference Regardless
This book is amazing. I read alot, but I never heard about The Black Angels. Once again, Black women risked their lives to make a difference. Those brave Black women endured racism and still triumphed. Black History IS American History! Thank you for the story.
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- Noelia A Tejada-James
- 05-29-24
Beautifully written
Every nurse should read this. Especially those who worked during COVID. Triggering at times but it felt good knowing that there were nurses before who conquered TB and touched so many lives. They also dealt with short staffing, high patient ration, and limited PPE. This portion of America’s history needs to be shared. We can learn so much about Medical institutional racism and discrimination. Hopefully, we can discuss openly this taboo topic and continue to find ways to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself and also, find solutions for bias and discrimination that occur at both the interpersonal and the institutional level of healthcare.
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- Roslyn Little Angel Daycare
- 04-05-25
the black angels
It is a detailed story of how a terrible disease was combated and the unseen angels who participated in it. Easy read at times crude of details but a story of hope, faith, and resilience for a brighter future for a black community .
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- BohemianEmpress
- 04-03-24
Loved this!
I'm so glad to have been able to listen to this book. It was amazing and I've learned a lot. Sad that while I was in Registered Nursing College, never heard of these amazing Black Nurses.
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- C. Paris
- 06-24-24
Smooth narrative non-fiction
Combines medical history (including very graphic descriptions of TB signs and symptoms) and racial discrimination seamlessly.
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- Aundraya Reliford
- 09-20-24
A true calling
It's shameful that most of us have never knew this story and the impact these nurses have had, Beautiful and incredible story about the dedication of these nurses.
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- Infowiz
- 01-31-24
Tons of amazing medical American/black history that easily reads like your favorite novel.
Where to start… 🤔This book was fascinating, heartbreaking, heart warming, funny, triggering, deeply interesting, informative, and vexing‼️
As a woman, black person, & nurse, I’ve learned and heard about many social injustices, atrocities & horrible acts of racism mentioned. I’ve even experienced my own workplace racism. But the stories and recall in this book, hits different.
My God‼️ The level of patience, resilience, tenacity , perseverance, eye on the prize, black unity, fearlessness, discipline, emotional intelligence, self control, black girl magic & excellence, continues to leave me in total awe of my fellow black nurses. So many times, I wanted to throw my phone across the room and scream‼️
The way TB, germs, medicine, & the scientific method were described, was so captivating & informative. I wish science could’ve been explained to me like l that in schools.
I also thoroughly enjoyed hearing the pov and job tasks of the doctors & nurses. As a nurse, I can confirm the descriptions were spot on‼️ The patient accounts were vividly accurate as well. I could see them, hear them, & smell them.
The narrator of this book’s voice sounded like it was created just for this story. She did such an outstanding job‼️🙏🏾🙌🏾
This book is a page turner and very hard to put down‼️❤️
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- LadyRoxilana
- 09-10-24
So many emotions
An honest, raw narrative that was, by turns, inspirational, educational, and at times infuriating. I found myself crying with sadness when things went wrong, cheering alongside their successes, and cursing with anger at the injustices described. An absolute must read or listen!
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