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Andrew Wehrman

Andrew Wehrman wins the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Gomes Memorial Book Prize

John Fea   |  October 31, 2023

The Central Michigan University history professor won the prize for his book The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution. Listen to our interview with Andrew Wehrman in Episode 107 of The Way of Improvement Leads […]

Episode 107: “The Politics of Smallpox in Revolutionary America”

John Fea   |  December 19, 2022

The American Revolution happened in the midst of a smallpox epidemic. In one of the timeliest history books of the publishing season, historian Andrew Wehrman visits the podcast to talk about what the patriots of the American Revolution and the […]

A St. Louis anti-vaxxer was arrested, strapped down by four men, and vaccinated after trying to convince Blacks from the South not to take the vaccine

John Fea   |  February 12, 2022

The article is from the St. Louis Dispatch, August 6, 1923. Thanks to historian Andrew Wehrman for bringing this to my attention. Here is his Twitter commentary:

What a Charles Willson Peale painting can teach us about vaccinating our children

John Fea   |  December 4, 2021

Central Michigan University historian Andrew Wehrman has been an indispensable guide in this age of COVID-19. Here is a taste of his recent piece at Age of Revolutions blog: For portrait painters like Charles Willson Peale, ignoring smallpox was part […]

Sources on the history of religious-based vaccine resistance in America

John Fea   |  December 3, 2021

I included a lot of history in today’s Current feature on vaccine exemptions. The piece draws on a talk I gave earlier this week to the constituents of the Council of Foreign Relations. I am told that the video will […]

Tweet of the Day

John Fea   |  November 30, 2021

Andrew Wehrman nails it:

Vaccination mandates have a long history. Backlash to vaccination mandates have a long history.

John Fea   |  September 29, 2021

Good to see Andrew Wehrman cited in Maggie Astor’s New York Times piece. A taste: Professor Wehrman this week tweeted an example of what, in an interview, he said was a “ubiquitous” phenomenon: The health board in Urbana, Ohio, Jordan’s hometown, enacted […]

Vaccine mandates are very American

John Fea   |  September 8, 2021

Ohio representative Jim Jordan recently tweeted this: Not really. Here is The Washington Post: At a time when the delta variant’s summer surge has renewed the nation’s divisions over coronavirus vaccines, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday said mandates enforcing […]