Description: We have long believed that our sanitized Western world is safe from the microbes and parasites of the tropics. Not so -- nor ever was it so. Tropical diseases are as American as the heart attack: yellow fever lived happily for centuries in Philadelphia; malaria made Washington, D.C., its home; the Ebola virus stopped off in Baltimore; and the Mexican pig tapeworm has settled comfortably among Orthodox Jews in Baltimore. The story of how such parasites arrived on our shores is a fascinating mix of history and scientific adventure, and includes the medical effects of the slave trade, how the World Wars helped spread disease, and why ecological devastation only helps these deadly diseases thrive and multiply.

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