Peripheral Nerve

“Peripheral Nerve is a robust and innovative inquiry into the course of the Cold War on the ground through developments in the health and medical professions in Latin America. The essays advance our knowledge and understanding of a fascinating range of case studies, combining well-researched personal stories and local histories articulated within national and international contexts. Every essay is thoroughly researched and excellently written.” - Daniela Spenser, coeditor of In from the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter with the Cold War

“An impressive collection of novel studies that demonstrates that the Cold War was global and left an enduring legacy. This book problematizes narratives of the U.S. command of Latin American public health and medicine by incorporating not only the role played by the Soviet Union but also the contribution of transnational intermediaries who pitted the superpowers against each other in processes of professional validation, state-building, and South-South solidarity ties.” - Marcos Cueto, coauthor of Medicine and Public Health in Latin America: A History

“Peripheral Nerve advances our understanding of the region's Cold War in many consequential respects. Above all, it challenges the conventional historical narrative that, in health and medicine, as elsewhere, Latin America's Cold War history was circumscribed and constrained by the hegemonic dominance of the United States in its imperial ‘backyard.’ . . . . The book's examination of Latin America's relations with the Second World before, during, and after the Cold War redresses a serious imbalance in the burgeoning literature, while extending the new scholarship’s appreciation of the regional struggle's ‘multivalent, multilevel nature.’” - Gil Joseph, from the foreword

“...[N]ew research, attuned to the impacts of superpower machinations but insistent on identifying distinctly inter-American dynamics, is gradually remaking popular understandings of the Cold War in Latin America. With varied contributions and scales of analysis, Peripheral Nerve is a strong contribution to this emerging literature.” - Andre Pagliarini, Cold War History

“One hopes that as the history of medicine in Africa and Asia during the Cold War more fully develops, Latin Americanists researching transnational medical connections will employ a comparative lens toward other parts of the global South.... Peripheral Nerve has proven that such efforts will engage a multidisciplinary audience of readers.” - Kelly Urban, Hispanic American Historical Review

“As Peripheral Nerve shows, the history of health and medicine in Latin America is, excuse the pun, in very good health, and clearly has much to tell us about the region’s experience of the Cold War and its legacies.” - Paulo Drinot, H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews

“[Peripheral Nerve] encourages readers to humanize health and medical practitioners on biographical and collective levels, and to see Latin America not just as audacious but as self-assured and an activist on the world stage.” - Alberto Ortiz Díaz, H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews

“Peripheral Nerve expertly demonstrates the subjective politics behind the creation of seemingly objective scientific and medical knowledge in twentieth-century Latin America.... The volume could not have come out at a better moment, a true demonstration of its importance to the history and historiography of health and medicine in the Americas.” - Cassia Roth, Social History of Medicine

“Irrespective of the coronavirus pandemic, Peripheral Nerve is a smart, timely, and welcome contribution to our understanding of health, medicine, policy, and development in Latin America and beyond. But given the current crisis, this anthology seems particularly apropos.” - Chris Hartmann, NACLA Report on the Americas

“Contributors to Peripheral Nerve demonstrate how focusing on health and medicine through Latin American lenses helps us to rethink the complex, multidirectional, and ever shifting ways the Cold War played out in Latin America, the United States, and the Soviet Union.... An invaluable volume.” - David Carey Jr., Bulletin of the History of Medicine

“Peripheral Nerve is an important contribution to the historiography of the Latin American Cold War.... The book’s theoretical insights and solid empirical research...provide a rich and nuanced analysis of the history of health and medicine in twentieth-century Latin America.” - Jorge A. Nállim, Social History

“Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Raúl Necochea López have produced a well thought out book of essays that argues for a reevaluation of how Latin American medical and health professionals navigated the Cold War.... They highlight how the conflicts and contestations of the Cold War went far beyond the bipolar vision taught to many of us.” - Jonathan D. Ablard, The Americas

“The overarching theme of Peripheral Nerve is that of local agency and, consequently, of revising the history of the Cold War from its margins. Such an approach brings Latin America back into the global history of the period. . . . The volume edited by Birn and López is a trailblazing contribution to the global history of medicine during the Cold War.” - Bogdan C. Iacob, Journal of Cold War Studies