The inspiring story of how we overcame a history of infectious disease, poisonous environments, and early death and unlocked an explosion in human potential—and a vision for the work ahead to optimize human flourishing in the twenty-first century

“Michelle Williams understands what too many have forgotten: Individual wellness and collective well-being are inseparable.”—Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO of Thrive Global

Public health is an unusual discipline—a combination of science, sociology, politics, and logistics—with a simple goal: to create the conditions for human thriving. Despite a century of massive improvements in our health and quality of life, Americans—reeling from our disastrous pandemic response, epidemics of depression and isolation, and a failing healthcare system—are understandably distrustful of public health. But the true history of public health doesn’t just reveal one of the greatest feats in human history—our great escape from early death and infectious disease—it points toward a future of even greater improvements. The cure for everything? It’s all of us, working together for our collective health.

Michelle A. Williams, one of the country’s true innovators in public health, here tells the dramatic hidden history of public health in America: a story of how radicals and renegades—from W.E.B. Du Bois to Alice Hamilton to the activists of ACT UP—and the institutions and infrastructure we built together helped transform our world. As she takes readers through these dramatic stories, she draws out their deeper lessons. In the end, she makes a powerful argument that it is public health that should drive our country’s policies and politics—that if our policies fail to increase the health and well-being of everyone, regardless of race or economic status, we have failed as a society.

Here is a dramatic, sweeping history with a galvanizing vision for how we can address new threats and complete the unfinished business of public health.