Alice Book Club: Pox Americana
Tue, Sep 29
|Alice T Miner Museum
September's book club selection looks at the revolution from a perspective we don't often discuss: that of illness and medicine.
Time & Location
Sep 29, 2026, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Alice T Miner Museum, 9618 US-9, Chazy, NY 12921, USA
About the event
September continues our America 250 book series, with Elizabeth Fenn's Pox Americana. Come, chat, snack, and share this great read with us! A few copies will be available at the Alice for loan, and it book is also available through the CEF library system.
About the book: A horrifying epidemic of smallpox was sweeping across the Americas when the American Revolution began, and yet we know almost nothing about it. Elizabeth A. Fenn is the first historian to reveal how deeply variola affected the outcome of the war in every colony and the lives of everyone in North America.
By 1776, when military action and political ferment increased the movement of people and microbes, the epidemic worsened. Fenn's remarkable research shows us how smallpox devastated the American troops at Québec and kept them at bay during the British occupation of Boston. Soon the disease affected the war in Virginia, where…