This true story follows the intrepid young women known by their patients as the "Black Angels," who risked their lives working under appalling conditions while caring for New York's poorest residents.
An indelible portrait of an era ... Smilios is not at her strongest when she tackles the science, but she still spins a lively, parallel account of the quest for a cure for TB ... In an otherwise excellent book, there is a disappointing lack of transparency in Smilios’s note to readers, which claims that "all the accounts and scenes in the book — including quotes, thoughts and reactions — are based on oral reports" corroborated by written documentation ... Despite this flaw, this is a book that deserves reading and remembering in our pandemic age.
