The Doctors’ Riot of 1788: Body Snatching, Bloodletting, and Anatomy in America
The Doctors’ Riot of 1788: Body Snatching, Bloodletting, and Anatomy in America reveals the forgotten history of the so-called Doctors’ Riot of 1788, a three-day riot not by doctors but against doctors and their students for stealing bodies from the predominantly White Trinity Church cemetery. As the Doctors’ Riot boiled over, Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and Revolutionary War hero Baron von Steuben were called in to quell the rioters, to no avail. Eventually, the state militia was ordered to fire into the crowd, killing several and injuring far more. The book covers not just the riot but also the history of body snatching in the United States and England. It essentially explores the moral questions behind an existential medical crisis: Does the need for medical students to learn anatomy on cadavers override society’s demand for maintaining the dignity of its dead?
This book publishes January 6, 2026 but is available for preorder.
Donora Death Fog: Clean Air and the Tragedy of a Pennsylvania Mill Town
Donora Death Fog is a true, highly detailed account of the worst air pollution disaster in US history. During a six-day smog in late October 1948 in Donora, a small mill town in southwestern Pennsylvania, twenty-one people died and thousands were sickened. The residents of that valley town didn’t think the smog was a big deal; they had lived through a great many fogs before, what could be different about this one. But it was different. More different than any of them imagined.