Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health

Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health. By Keith Wailoo. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. xii, 338 pp. Cloth, $34.95, ISBN 0-8078-2584-0. Paper, $16.95, ISBN 0-8078-4896-4.)

Keith Wailoo's latest book, Dying in the City of the Blues, analyzes the changing historical and cultural meanings of sickle-cell anemia, a disease named for its sickle-shaped blood cells. Focusing on Memphis, Tennessee, Wailoo demonstrates that "modern urban medicine's concepts of disease were themselves problematic and evolving, defined by local cultures and context." He also tells a national story, however, chronicling the changing meanings of the disease decade by decade and documenting the rise of scientific and popular representations of this so-called "Negro disease." It is a well-documented,...