“Building the Worlds That Kill Us: Disease, Death, and Inequality in American History” by David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz

By Terri Schlichenmeyer  Get lots of rest. That’s always good advice when you’re ailing. Don’t overdo it. Don’t try to be Superman or Supermom, just rest and follow your doctor’s orders. And if, as in the new book, “Building the Worlds That Kill Us” by David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, the color of your skin and your social strata are a certain way, you’ll feel better soon. Nearly five years ago, while interviewing residents along the Mississippi River in Louisiana for a book they were writing, authors Rosner and Markowitz learned that they’d caused a little brouhaha. Large corporations in the area, ones that the residents of “a small, largely African American community” had battled over air and soil contamination and illness, didn’t want any more “’agitators’” poking around. They’d asked a state trooper to see if the authors were going to cause trouble. For Rosner and Markowitz, this underscored “what every thoughtful person at least suspects”: that age, geography, immigrant status, “income, wealth, race, gender, sexuality, and social position” largely impacts the quality and availability of medical care.    It’s been this way since Europeans first arrived on North American shores. Native Americans “had their share of illness and disease”...