Before AIDS, few Americans though much about the possibility that they might contract a disease that would inexorably weaken them and dramatically shorten their lives, but for much of American history, most families faced such a catastrophe. A multi-generational social history of a disease now making an alarming comeback, this book spans 150 years, and tells the story of tuberculosis from the vantage point not of doctors and hospitals, but of patients and communities. It shows how the settlement of several Western cities, notably Colorado Springs and Pasadena, came out of a common perception equating health and the outdoor life. Sheila M. Rothman is the co-author of "The Willowbrook Wars".