"Shadows in the Valley offers a sensitive, poignant look at suffering, disease, and death in the lives of early settlers in the Pioneer Valley, just as authorities were beginning to identify disease pathogens, improve water and food supplies, and prevent childhood epidemics. . . . It is both modest and sweeping in scope, because the stories are carefully woven into a social history of larger changes occurring in American medicine and society."—Lynn M. Morgan, author of Community Participation in Health: The Politics of Primary Care in Costa Rica
"This richly textured study employs dozens of powerful case studies—as well as mortality statistics and mourning rituals, medical treatments and emerging public health practices—to illuminate 'how death informed life' for a range of New Englanders, including infants and the elderly, the Yankee elite and Irish immigrants, women in childbirth and men at war, over the long nineteenth century. Through his careful attention to both patients and pathogens as key characters in this story, anthropologist Alan Swedlund offers a creative model for a complex and humane history of medicine."—Karen Halttunen, University of Southern California
"Swedlund combines anthropological and historical approaches to describe medical practices, mourning rituals, and the emotions and meanings attached to the experience of illness and death in this fascinating account of illness, death, and mourning in a small New England town from the mid-19th to the early-20th century. . . . The author artfully manages the complex data, and his book, organized along major stages of the life course, gives insights into the connections between health, disease, medicine, culture, and social processes beyond the period described. Summing Up: Highly recommended."—Choice
"Sets a new standard for the growing body of literature on the ways disease has shaped the contours of our world. Seamlessly blending history and medical anthropology, Swedlund tells the riveting tale of sickness in an earlier time as a distinctly human process, filled to the brim with meanings and emotions, actions and uncertainties. . . . A must read for medical anthropologists, health historians, and all those with an abiding concern with comprehending the human condition."—Merrill Singer, University of Connecticut
"By his intense studies of 'smaller communities at the margins of the mainstream' (Swedlund) illuminates how ordinary people dealt with major issues of life and death. . . . A rewarding read."—Yale Journal of Humanities in Medicine
"A handful of black-and-white photographs illustrate this scholarly, exhaustively researched and aptly presented account. A welcome contribution to American history and sociology shelves."—Midwest Book Review
"Shadows in the Valley does an excellent job of describing the context of death and disease. . . . It deserves a wide readership among scholars of demographic history and nineteenth century New England."—EH.NET
"True to his training, Swedlund is careful to lay out his research methodology. As he move on to blend together his stories of medical knowledge, personal tragedy and community dynamics, however, the book becomes increasingly absorbing and increasingly human."—Life and Times
"Quite simply a remarkable work. . . . In this meticulously researched, gracefully written, and poignantly illustrated work, Swedlund weaves the strands of life and death in small communities into the larger fabric of cultural and medical history."—Historical Journal of Massachusetts