In this episode of In Conversation, Lilyanna D'Amato speaks with Paul Kelton about his new book, Hidden Terrors: The Scourge of Cholera in Jackson's America (Oxford UP, 2026), which traces the arrival of the first cholera pandemic in the United States, in the 1830s. Drawing on various historical documents, including family papers, letters, and newspaper accounts from the time, Kelton examines how ordinary Americans reacted to the strange disease and how the country’s ideologies and inequalities resulted in loss of life on a mass scale.

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What drives someone to challenge the status quo to prevent disaster? In The Preventioneers: Diseases, Disasters, and the Discoveries That Changed Our World with Barry R Davis (JHU Press, 2026), Barry R. Davis chronicles the work of bold individuals who recognized the warning signs of catastrophe and intervened before tragedy could strike. With stories that include fire, disease, climate change, and public health, Davis illuminates the efforts of those who confronted indifference, ignorance, and inertia to shift society's focus from reaction to prevention.

Through real-world case studies and historical research, The Preventioneers introduces readers to a diverse cast of problem-solvers who identified threats, persuaded skeptics, and devised practical solutions. In colonial Boston, a young Benjamin Franklin witnessed one of the city's most devastating fires. Haunted by that memory, Franklin grew into a lifelong advocate for fire prevention. Ignaz Semmelweis and Sara Josephine Baker fought to raise awareness of and prevent child and maternal mortality. Richard Doll's work to establish the link between smoking and lung cancer revealed the danger of what many viewed as a harmless activity. These inspiring stories exemplify the central message of the book: Prevention is a powerful form of civic action. Their work underscores how principles of prevention transcend fields, whether addressing maternal mortality, auto safety, cancer, or climate change.

Davis underscores that successful prevention requires more than knowledge; it also demands courage, strategy, and relentless advocacy. In doing so, The Preventioneers introduces a framework for thinking about how societies can act early, save lives, and build a healthier, more resilient future.

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Tune in to this discussion about How Real Is Race?: Unraveling Race, Biology, and Culture by Carol C. Mukhopadhyay, Rosemary Henze, and Yolanda T. Moses (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)

Biologically speaking, there is no such thing as race. Yet this seems to contradict the experiences of people in the United States and other countries where racial classification is used daily, by individuals and institutions. Race still matters, whether in wealth accumulation, educational achievement, health, the legal system, or in personal safety. How can race not be real when we experience its effects every day?

Mukhopadhyay, Henze, and Moses systematically deconstruct the myth of race as biology and address the reality of race as a cultural invention, drawing on biocultural, historical, and cross-cultural anthropological perspectives. In doing so, they shed light on the intricate interplay among race, biology, culture, power, and stratification. Part I, “The Fallacy of Race as Biology,” unravels the myth that races are biologically valid divisions of humanity. Part II, “Culture Creates Race,” explores race as a social construction; the emergence of the racial worldview as ideological justification for inequality; and how social processes, especially restrictions on interracial sex and marriage, maintained visible markers of racial hierarchy. Part III, “Contemporary Issues,” examines current manifestations of racial stratification including the educational achievement gap, health disparities, and how the language of race embodies and reinforces a racial worldview.

Dr. Mukhopadhyay is a cultural anthropologist whose specialties are gender, family, sexuality, race, cultural diversity, multicultural education, cognitive anthropology, ethnographic decision-modeling, theory and methodology. Her research has focused on gendered activities, in households, politics, music, and science & engineering (STEM). This has involved fieldwork in both the United States and India.

Dr. Rosemary Henze is an educational anthropologist whose teaching, research, and educational projects seek to enhance social justice and equity in education. She applies concepts and methods from anthropology and linguistics to the study of race relations, immigration and multilingualism, Islamophobia, and the spread of English, among other topics.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.

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