Teacher Stories
The Power of Stories and Early Relationships
March 5, 2021
When 4th grade teacher Miriam Marecek turned down the lights and lit the reading candle, magic happened. Pediatrician and journalist Perri Klass describes what it was like being one of Ms. Marecek's students and the impact it's had on her life and professional career. Now, as national medical director for Reach Out and Read, Dr. Klass, promotes books and reading aloud, together, starting at birth.
Teacher Stories
The Power of Stories and Early Relationships
March 5, 2021
When 4th grade teacher Miriam Marecek turned down the lights and lit the reading candle, magic happened. Pediatrician and journalist Perri Klass describes what it was like being one of Ms. Marecek's students and the impact it's had on her life and professional career. Now, as national medical director for Reach Out and Read, Dr. Klass, promotes books and reading aloud, together, starting at birth.
Teacher Stories
The Power of Stories and Early Relationships
March 5, 2021
When 4th grade teacher Miriam Marecek turned down the lights and lit the reading candle, magic happened. Pediatrician and journalist Perri Klass describes what it was like being one of Ms. Marecek's students and the impact it's had on her life and professional career. Now, as national medical director for Reach Out and Read, Dr. Klass, promotes books and reading aloud, together, starting at birth.
Talk Nerdy
Childhood Vaccines w/ Perri Klass
Feb. 15, 2021
In this episode of Talk Nerdy, Cara Santa Maria is joined by NYU professor of journalism and pediatrics Dr. Perri Klass to talk about her new book, "A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future." They examine the profound impact that medical advancements like vaccines have had on infant mortality and public health. Also discussed: the often-overlooked women and minority practitioners who changed the course of human history.
“In A Good Time to Be Born, [Klass] takes the most complex human patterns of all—history, medicine, politics, art—and knits them into something unique and beautiful.”
—The New York Times
A Good Time To Be Born
How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future
The fight against child mortality that transformed parenting, doctoring and the way we live.
Only one hundred years ago, even in the world’s wealthiest nations, children died in great numbers—of diarrhea, diphtheria and measles, of scarlet fever and meningitis. Culture was shaped by these deaths; diaries and letters recorded them, poets and writers wrote about and lamented them. Not even the high and mighty could escape: presidents and titans of industry lost their children, the poor and powerless lost theirs even more frequently.
The near-conquest of infant and child mortality is one of our greatest human achievements. Perri Klass pulls the story together for the first time, paying tribute to scientists, public health advocates, and groundbreaking women doctors who brought new scientific ideas about sanitation and vaccination to families. Thanks to their work, early death is now the exception, bringing about a massive transformation in society and freeing parents to worry a lot more about a lot less.