Description: Between 1850 and the turn of the century, the population of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, exploded from 20,000 to nearly 300,000. The city's quick growth brought with it all of the problems of nineteenth-century urbanization: high death rates, infectious diseases, crowded housing, filthy streets, inadequate water supplies, and incredible stench. The Healthiest City, now available in paperback, shows how a coalition of reform supporters - including business people, clergy, women's groups, professionals, trade-union Socialists, Populists, and reform Republicans - united to demand community education and public responsibility to achieve for Milwaukee the title of "the healthiest city" by the 1930s. In her new preface, Judith Walzer Leavitt notes that the 1993 cryptosporidiosis outbreak revealed that Milwaukeeans - and Americans in general in recent years - have paid decreasing attention to the machinery that keeps our cities operating and our citizens healthy. The bill for disinvesting in public health is paid by the public in inconvenience, in illness, and even in death.

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