Fevered Measures

“This very detailed and thoroughly reference work will be of greatest interest to students or scholars of the history of public health or the history of public policy, particularly immigration policy. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers/faculty.” — M. A. Thompson, Choice

“Fevered Measures is an engaging and multi-layered historical narrative that underscores the centrality of public health to daily life, social relations and power dynamics along the Texas
Mexico border over one century. . . . What makes this story particularly compelling is that Mckiernan-González frames it with a compassionate and informed plea for greater awareness of Latina/o health disparities.” — Alexandra Minna Stern, Global Public Health

“John Mckiernan-González's impressive work Fevered Measures reminds us that the intertwining connections of race, health, and exclusion have a long history in the United States.” — Amy M. Hay, Southern Spaces

“Mckiernan-Gonzalez . . . adds substantially to the large literature on the history of public health, particularly its role in controlling immigration into the United States.” — Stephen J. Kunitz, American Historical Review

“The vivid and rich narrative of Fevered Measures should reach both an academic and popular audience on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border.” — Miguel A. Levario, Southwestern Historical Quarterly

“Fevered Measures is a wonderful and significant contribution to Latina/o studies, medical history, and borderlands history.” — Mark Allan Goldberg, Pacific Historical Review

“Mckeirnan-González provides a sophisticated and ?ne-grained analysis of the work of overzealous public health of?cials on the border, but he also places these efforts in a global imperial context.” — Elliott Young, Journal of American History

“For those interested in public health, Fevered Measures will be an exemplar of how to observe the complexities of ethnic and national identity in borderland settings.  These readers will benefit from the book’s presentation of the multiple and shifting meanings of the term Mexican in South Texas and the ways these unstable meaning were ultimately collapsed by public health officers to define an exclusionary national community.” — Mariola Espinosa, Journal of Southern History

“Fevered Measures is a sophisticated book that will be useful to borderlands and public-health scholars, as well as to historians looking for models of how knowledge and institutions perform social and cultural work.” — Nancy Berlage, Texas Books in Review

“Fevered Measures gives us a penetrating view of the intersections between race and public health policies, bringing new insights to the history of both the borderlands and US public health. It will be valuable to students and researchers in Chicano/Latino studies, in social sciences and humanities. Appealing also to a broader audience, this welcome book contributes significantly to the current debates about Latinos and American public health. . . .” — Ana I. Ugarte, Latino Studies

“The broad scope of the themes explored in the text ensures that the work will find a welcome audience well beyond those interested in frontier and borderland histories. Specifically, this text will find a receptive audience for those interested in the history of public health. Advanced undergraduates and graduate students will find the narrative accessible and enjoyable.” — Bridget Maria Chesterton, Canadian Journal of History

“...this detailed study of the evolution of public health measures in the Texas borderlands provides a fascinating discussion of racial formulation and nation-building through public health.” — Mary Melcher, Journal of Arizona History

“Fevered Measures is a path-breaking work of scholarship that will shape our understanding of the relationship between borders and public health within and between the United States and Mexico.” — Geraldo L. Cadava, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

“Mckiernan-González provides us with valuable historical context, which is too often missing, for current debates about immigration regulation. His book deserves to be read widely by historians and sociologists of immigration, race, and public health in the U.S. and Mexico, as well as those in the public health and policy-making arenas.” — Deirdre M. Moloney, Reviews in American History

“The clear achievement of Fevered Measures is Mckiernan-González’s excavation of an under-examined archive about public health at the Texas–Mexico border.”  — Misun Dokko, American Studies

“John Mckiernan-Gonzalez...tackles a daunting list of topics in Fevered Measures, including race, ethnicity, national identity, shifting borders, the meaning of citizenship, and state formation...Drawing upon extensive archival resources in both the United States and Mexico, he provides a different way of approaching racial, cultural, and even diplomatic relations in the borderlands.” — Don M. Coerver, Hispanic American Historical Review

“This work is significant in that it draws attention to a neglected aspect of border history, another instance of life disregarding arbitrary lines set for human convenience, of humans using one tool, the quarantine, for another purpose, racism.” — John H. Barnhill, Journal of the West

"The questions he asks and the ways he answers them sensitize us to the scapegoating and medical victimization of a populationassociated with the eruption of devastating illness." — Linda Hall, Journal of American History

"Fevered Measures makes a compelling read and will be thought-provoking for historians of medicine and public health, as well as those interested in state-citizen interactions in both Mexico and the United States." — Julia Rodriguez, Bulletin of the History of Medicine

"Fevered Measures succeeds in documenting the long, fraught, and uneven dialogue about the meaning of good health between people in two countries that share a porous border. It is important reading at a time when Mexican officialdom has changed its tune regarding Mexicans in the United States." — Raul Necochea, Journal of Latin American Studies