DescriptionThe veteran Wall Street Journal science reporter Marilyn Chases fascinating account of an outbreak of bubonic plague in late Victorian San Francisco is a real-life thriller that resonates in todays headlines. The Barbary Plague transports us to the Gold Rush boomtown in 1900, at the end of the citys Gilded Age. With a deep understanding of the effects on public health of politics, race, and geography, Chase shows how one city triumphed over perhaps the most frightening and deadly of all scourges.About the AuthorMARILYN CHASE, a longtime reporter for The Wall Street Journal, covers medical science and health care, currently focusing on infectious-disease outbreaks and bioterrorism. An honors graduate of Stanford University who also holds a masters degree from the University of California at Berkeley, Chase lives with her family in San Francisco.