Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio - Paperback

by Jeffrey Kluger (Author)

The compelling true story of Dr. Jonas Salk's quest to develop a vaccine for polio.

In 1916, the United States was hit with one of the worst polio epidemics in history. The disease was a terrifying enigma: striking out of nowhere, it afflicted tens of thousands of children and left them--literally overnight--paralyzed. Others it simply killed. At the same time, a child named Jonas Salk was born....

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio shortly before assuming the Presidency, Salk was given an impetus to study this deadly illness. After assisting in the creation of an influenza vaccine, Salk took up the challenge. His progress in combating the virus was hindered by the politics of medicine and by a rival researcher determined to discredit his proposed solution. But Salk's perseverance made history--and for close to seventy years his vaccine has saved countless lives, bringing humanity close to eradicating polio throughout the world.

Splendid Solution chronicles Dr. Salk's race against time to achieve an unparalleled breakthrough that made him a cultural hero and icon of modern medicine.

Author Biography

Jeffrey Kluger is Editor at Large for TIME magazine and the author of twelve books, including The Narcissist Next Door, Splendid Solution, Apollo 13, Apollo 8 and the novel Holdout. He has written more than 40 cover stories for TIME on topics ranging from space to human behavior to climate to medicine. Along with others at TIME, Kluger is an Emmy nominee for the web series A Year in Space.