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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Read
Review: Absolutely engaging, completely filled with irony, politics gone wild, honor and sacrifice, humanity, treachery and betrayal, fascinating facts (eg, with running water, Drinker finally took her first bath in 28 years), and so much more. Better than any soap opera!
Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: Finally, a great nonfiction book written for children. It keeps ones interest all the way through, and is a great companion with "Fever 1793."
Rating: 
Summary: Another nice read for young adults from Jim Murphy.
Review: I have read two other of Murphy's books about disasters, and this is along the same line. Murphy breaks down the Yellow Fever epidemic which savaged Philadelphia from August, 1793 to October, 1793. During this plague, 4,000 to 5,000 people died in the largest American city at the time. Both the Federal and State governments were incapacitated from this plague and had no control. George Washington moved back to Mount Vernon for several months. The rich fled for rural areas. What was left were poor people left to fend for themselves and some die hard patriots that tried to help. Murphy tells the story of the plague and how the sickness ran its course. The city eventually survived and made a full recovery.
This was a good read, although not like Murphy's other books. A young reader can easily cover this book in two days. This is a good read for adults too. Another good read from Murphy.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating book
Review: In August 1793, the capital of the new United States, Philadelphia, was in the grip of a heat wave. Suddenly, in the poorer quarters of the city, the poor began to sicken and die in the most horrible of ways. Many people fled, while other worked to stem the tide of illness. Armed with an archaic (and downright wrong) theory of medicine, the city could do little but suffer as this disease raged throughout the city, carrying off some 4-5,000 people (out of a population of 51,000). This is the story of that plague (Yellow Fever), its effects on the country, and its possible future.This book was written for younger readers, but is detailed and informative enough to interest even the oldest of readers. I found the book to be quite fascinating, and learned a good deal about the state of medicine at the time. The final chapter, which attempts to scare the reader with the idea of a return of Yellow Fever, I found to be a bit out-of-focus. Nonetheless, I found this to be a fascinating book, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the early days of the American Republic.
Rating:
Summary: An Intense and interesting read
Review: Jim Murphy amazes, educates and horrifies with his wonderful Siebert Award winning and Newberry Honor Book, AN AMERICAN PLAGUE. Murphy deftly describes the political, social, medical and economic conditions that allowed the yellow fever epidemic to devastate Philadelphia in the 1790s in a way that is truly terrifying but nonetheless intriguing.
I couldn't put it down.
Rating:
Summary: Shining example of nonfiction for young people
Review: Jim Murphy's award winning book is a wonderful example of literary nonfiction for young people that's every bit as compelling and well-researched as that for adults. Other recent noteworthy books are Candace Fleming's innovative Ben Franklin's Almanac, Russell Freedman's In Defense of Liberty, and Deborah Hopkinson's fascinating book on immigrants in New York City, SHUTTING OUT THE SKY.
Rating: 
Summary: This Book is painfully boring!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: This book is a well researched and well done nonfiction account of the yellow fever in Philadelphia. That being said, one should not be daunted by that. This book reads like a story. The inclusion of newspaper clips and photos from the time help make this seem even more real to the reader. I will be using this along with Fever 1793 next year in my classroom. Social Studies teachers could easily adapt this to include in their curriculum too.
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