People like Molly Caldwell Crosby

Molly Caldwell Crosby (born August 22, 1972) is a journalist and author of three literary nonfiction books: The American Plague, Asleep, and The Great Pearl Heist.

Crosby received her BA from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, and her MFA from Johns Hopkins University’s Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. She has worked for National Geographic magazine, as well as a freelance journalist. She lives in Memphis with her husband, Andrew Crosby, and their two daughters.

The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History (Berkley Books, Penguin, USA, 2006) is a national bestseller and was called a "first-rate medical detective drama" by the New York Times Sunday Book Review and "gripping" by Newsweek. It was chosen as a New York Times editor's pick and a Book Sense pick. The book is the narrative account of a disease that once ravaged cities like New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans culminating in the devastating 1878 yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee—the worst urban disaster of its time. The book also chronicles the controversial human experimentation conducted by Walter Reed and his team of army physicians in Cuba in 1900, which eventually led to the conquering of the disease known as "the American Plague.”