1987
First Published
3.94
Average Rating
752
Number of Pages
Why were nearly 10,000 people killed in six weeks in Hamburg, while most of Europe was left almost unscathed? As Richard J. Evans explains, it was largely because the town was a "free city" within Germany that was governed by the "English" ideals of laissez- faire. The absence of an effective public-health policy combined with ill-founded medical theories and the miserable living conditions of the poor to create a scene ripe for tragedy. The story of the "cholera years" is, in Richard Evans’s hands, tragically revealing of the age’s social inequalities and governmental pitilessness and incompetence; it also offers disquieting parallels with the world’s public-health landscape today.
Avg Rating
3.94
Number of Ratings
81
5 STARS
33%
4 STARS
42%
3 STARS
16%
2 STARS
2%
1 STARS
6%
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Author
Richard J. Evans
Author · 16 books
He was born in London, of Welsh parentage, and is now Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Gonville & Caius College. Evans has also taught at the University of Stirling, University of East Anglia and Birkbeck College, London. Having been a Visiting Professor in History at Gresham College during 2008/09, he is now the Gresham Professor of Rhetoric. He was educated at Forest School (Walthamstow), Jesus College, Oxford, and St Antony's College, Oxford. In a 2004 interview, Evans has stated that during frequent visits to Wales during his childhood inspired both an interest in history and a sense of "otherness".
