Book Review: On Call by Anthony Fauci

By Alec Pruchnicki, M.D.

Reviewing a 455-page autobiography is pretty daunting, but the recent show trial for Dr. Anthony Fauci and the accusation of contempt of Congress, made an immediate response necessary.

He started with a brief description of growing up in a relatively middle class Italian American family in New York City. There was also a description of how his pharmacist father instilled in him the value of serving others which continued with the Jesuits at Holy Cross. His academic career included being first in his class in elementary and medical schools.

He went from the U.S. Public Health Service to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where he worked in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). He eventually headed the NIAID and concentrated on vaccine development.

Fauci’s story is not just an inside look at medical catastrophes — it shows how disaster can sometimes make changes in medical policies necessary. Usually, research on new diseases and their treatments takes many years. When AIDS arose in the early 1980s, the disease typically killed victims within a year and long-term research was a poor option. After many verbal attacks by the gay community and AIDS activists ─ and numerous accusations of “murderer”─ he spoke with the same advocates and was able to design expedited research options. Personal accounts are a key part of his story and recur throughout the book. As a physician, I can tell you that most doctors, including myself, at some time during their career must make life or death decisions with inadequate information because of time pressure. Fauci had to do it for an entire epidemic.

As bad as the AIDS epidemic was, it was soon followed by other potential plagues such as SARS, MERS, an anthrax scare, seasonal influenza variations, and ZIKA, all of which he describes in detail. But progress was made on all of these or spread was prevented. As a person who has lost friends and family to AIDS, and also treated people with AIDS over the years, I can attest that today’s antiviral treatments have transformed the hopelessness that marked the early 1980s, turning the disease into a chronic, treatable condition for many patients.

Curing a disease is not the best form of medicine. The absence of a disease is the best outcome and that’s why vaccines for AIDS, and lots of other diseases, is still the goal throughout medicine. The rapid onset of COVID from a few cases to a pandemic ─ and its subsequent control with effective vaccines ─ illustrates this. Like most medications, vaccines are seldom 100% effective but they can often bring down disease occurrence by orders of magnitude.

One of the values of this book is that it doesn’t just give the history of each of these new diseases and Fauci’s involvement with them. It also gives a description of how effective public health initiatives can be. He goes into detail on his relationships with Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Obama, and their staffs and how effective cooperation worked well ─ even with Vice President Dick Cheney. He shows how international cooperation, such as the PEPFAR program, can save lives by the millions. These results came about because of his ability to work directly with these presidents and their staffs.

Then came Trump. Initially things seemed cordial. But as President Trump started to make public announcements that were overly optimistic or just plain wrong, Fauci was faced with a dilemma. He had to give truthful information to the public and not just private information to the president. Trump didn’t like hearing bad news and really didn’t like having bad news told to the public when it contradicted him. Eventually, the relationship became distant, then cold, then hostile. Other right wing politicians like Senator Rand Paul and trade negotiator Peter Navarro set their sights on Fauci ─ which continues to this day. Trump followers hurled “murderer” at him, sometimes accompanied by death threats to the doctor and his family. The book was written in 2024 and the hostility has continued even after Fauci’s retirement and Trump’s re-election, but it is not recounted in detail here.

The description of the scientific community’s culture is included. Fauci describes himself as not political and I can attest that many members of the science community are often apolitical. Also, balancing research and clinical practice is sometimes difficult or impossible. I did this for a while with basic research on Alzheimer’s disease and many clinical duties but eventually had to give up the research.

Accusations against Fauci are numerous and this book addresses them. He has been attacked for his large pensions, but if he had gone into private practice in New York City, he could have made a lot more ─ and probably avoided death threats. He has been accused of loving the spotlight. But he has always acknowledged coworkers and the book is filled with hundreds of names of people in medicine, government agencies, and politics whom he praises highly. He might like the spotlight, but he doesn’t hog it.

Fauci has been accused of ignoring the possibility that Covid came from a laboratory leak or that it was intentionally strengthened during research. Both of these are extremely unlikely, but with new scientific discoveries you often cannot say something with 100% certainty. There is always a small possibility of other explanations. He discusses this in the book and it is common for scientists to think this way.

So, should you read this book? It’s long with lots of details, names, and scientific discussions. You won’t just get inside gossip but also an understanding of how medical science works or why it sometimes doesn’t work. In the future, there will be more epidemics and this book will help you understand them. That makes it worthwhile.

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New Book Celebrates “Diamond and Juba,” Irish and Black New York Youths Who Pioneered Popular Dance

By Phyllis Eckhaus

What made early America great? Beyond vast natural resources, slavery, and land theft, beyond a vision of radical equality that jumpstarted social mobility for white men, one could argue that what made the pre-Civil War United States such a seething cauldron of energy was the generative friction of races and cultures. In other words, multiculturalism.

This is a key take-away from April Masten’s fascinating tale of two youths who danced with such fantastic skill in the public gathering places of Lower Manhattan that P.T. Barnum took them on to become their exploitative impresario. Diamond and Juba: The Raucous World of 19th-Century Challenge Dancing follows Irish-American John Diamond and African-American William Henry Lane, known as Juba, from their early days by the docks to their celebrated careers as cross-country-traveling, astonishing innovators and competitors ─ the progenitors of tap and modern dance. Using contemporary newspaper and sporting news accounts, Masten paints a rich, detailed portrait of the melting pot of dance and popular culture in antebellum America.

From the Five Points to national celebrity
In early 19th century New York City, poverty was as significant as race, and the “color line was faintest in the lowliest wards.” Poor Irish and free Blacks lived together near what is now Foley Square, in Manhattan’s Five Points slum. They intermarried and danced together and against each other, sometimes in “public houses” or taverns (a set-up recently dramatized in the Broadway musical Paradise Square).

In 1839, John Diamond was reportedly thirteen years old when he was discovered by a not-yet-famous Phineas T. Barnum, then a Bowery shoe polish merchant who “dabbled in amusements.” The Manhattan waterfront abounded with dance. Children, seeking to contribute to their households, would literally dance for eels. This was a variation on the Irish cake dance, where a winning dancer might score a “cake” made with oatmeal and sugar.

Barnum recalled “Master Diamond” as “really a genius in the dancing line,” and contemporary reports back him up. He contracted with Diamond’s father to indenture the boy and set out to make him a star. When young Diamond ran away from Barnum a year later, the promoter felt the loss so keenly he found another spectacular dancer, namely Lane, reportedly ten years old. Lane worked freelance for Barnum, who billed him variously as Master Rattler, Master Diamond, and Master Juba. Juba referred to both an African river and a Southern plantation slave dance.

“Negro dancing” and the melting pot of dance
With nuance and care Masten meticulously parses Diamond and Juba’s performances and creative cultural borrowings, including from then-famous ballerinas, such as the Austrian Fanny Elssler, beloved for her demonstrations of dance across cultures. Both boys were so-called “Negro dancers,” with Diamond and sometimes Juba performing in blackface. This signaled that the entertainment derived from racial mixing and was low-brow rather than high-brow.

But the performances themselves were extraordinary amalgams. After all, dancing was such a popular pastime, commercial dance performances had to be extra-special to command ticket prices. On stage, there were scripted elaborate “travesties,” with allusions to current events and other popular acts. Thus young Diamond performed as “La Bayadere in Ole Kentuck!” a “concocted burletta that twisted a famous ballet into a comment on current events” — the then-famous ballet being La Bayadere and the current events being the Hartford, Connecticut trial of the kidnapped and enslaved Africans who had mutinied against their captors on the ship Amistad.

Star dancers touted their ability to imitate, incorporate, and improve upon every possible technique and style. That process of amalgamation was furthered by challenge dancing. In early America, everything was a gamble, and popular dance was promoted as a boxing-like sport, via matches and competitions, often fake insofar as the “winner” might not get the advertised winnings. But Masten portrays her protagonists ultimately as true competitors and champions who challenged and elevated each other, resulting in the uniquely American dance they mutually helped create. Their rivalry — they apparently competed against each other three times — spurred excitement and ticket sales. At the height of their fame, they headlined acts that filled 1,400-seat theaters.

Race, class, and social mobility
Race animates this story in ways both predictable and surprising. First, blackface performance typically reinforced racist stereotypes, but it also enabled Juba to perform in white venues, where his dignity and talent remained evident.

The popularity of “Negro dancing” gave Diamond and Juba the leverage to break free from Barnum to oversee their own careers. Even in the 1850s, when minstrelsy rose in popularity, Diamond and Juba were the headliners, not the minstrel troupes that accompanied them.

For Diamond, Negro dancing allied him with the white working class — Democrats, firemen, and nativists. They became his ardent fan base, at one point rioting against the foreign Fanny Essler. Diamond — a frequently jailed, impetuous brawler — appeared to be at one with his fans. For a time he gave up dance to serve, poorly, in the Mexican-American War.

By contrast, for the disciplined Juba, Negro dancing was a vehicle of social mobility. When author Charles Dickens raved about Juba’s dancing, “Boz’s Juba” leveraged Dickens’ praise to launch a career in Great Britain, where he married a white woman and aspired to own a carriage. Yet both Diamond and Juba died young paupers, Juba in 1854 in Liverpool and Diamond in 1857 in Philadelphia.

The product of 15 years of research, Masten’s chronological foray into Diamond and Juba’s careers is a marvel of engaging “you are there” story-telling. She occasionally lost me, but never was I bored, nor did I ever doubt her judgment.

Instead, I felt privileged to enter a shimmery long-ago world, one both familiar and strange — a world shrouded in exoticism, celebrating sport and celebrity, and elevating extraordinary talent. Fans of dance and popular culture will savor this reconstruction of two crucially-connected young lives that jigged, ham-boned, shuffled, tapped, and otherwise danced their way into American history.

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Up the River

By Richard Eric Weigle

Who knew the phrase “sent up the river” had anything to do with Greenwich Village? I certainly did not until a very interesting book. Maritime Mile: The Story Of The Greenwich Village Waterfront by Stuart Waldman and Zack Weinstein was bequeathed to me from the estate of my dear friend, the late Barbara Steinberg of Morton Street. As I opened the book, I noticed numerous names of familiar friends and neighbors who were responsible for its printing and publishing. They include the Barrow Commerce Street Block Association under the superb leadership of Kathy Donaldson, Dave and Helen Gruber, Deborah Glick, Tom Duane, Albert Bennett, Bob Oliver, Christine Quinn, the West Village Tenants Association and many more including my wonderful friend, Barbara Steinberg.

The history of the Maritime Mile, which stretches from 14th St. to Canal St., is fascinating, intriguing and far too complex and expansive to summarize in this article. However, I do recommend reading this enlightening and well written and photographed book.

When the Greenwich Village Historic District was created in 1969, the Landmarks Preservation Committee placed the waterfront outside its boundaries hoping to add it later ─ but it never happened. This led to developers wanting to carve up, demolish and develop the area any way they saw fit. Kathy Donaldson explained to me how this book and the years of protests and meetings by concerned Village residents, changed the minds of the mayors and city planners of the 1970s and 80s. They were proposing, among other things, to build a super highway along the Hudson River. Instead, thanks to them, we have the beautiful riverside promenades, parks and multiuse piers that we all can enjoy today.

I would like to share some enlightening facts that I learned from reading this book. I had always believed that the phrase “sent up the river” referred to someone who had committed a crime in lower Manhattan, was tried and convicted, and then sent up the Hudson River by boat to the state prison in Ossining called Sing Sing. All that is true, however, there is another part of the story well worth telling.

In the late 1700s and early 1800s six deadly outbreaks of yellow fever ravaged the city causing thousands of deaths. Many fled north to the greener and less crowded countryside ─ known then as Greenwich ─ with cleaner air and purer water from the Minetta Creek. The name Greenwich comes from the Dutch word, Groenwijck, which literally meant “green district.” It was Anglicized by the British after taking over New Amsterdam in 1664. This influx of people, along with the construction of one very important building, were the two largest catalysts for the urbanization of Greenwich. That building was Newgate Prison, an enormous building stretching from Christopher St. on the south to Charles Lane on the north, and Greenwich St. on the east to Washington St. on the west ─ which at that time was adjacent to the Hudson River. The new prison needed staff, a pier built on the Hudson River and Christopher St. to receive shipments of food for the inmates, housing for the laborers and a hotel for the visitors who came, not only to visit inmates, but to see this huge new structure.

So, long before Sing Sing was built in 1825, prisoners, who were sent up the river, were actually being sent only as far as Newgate Prison in Greenwich. The area was later called Greenwich Village because even though it was a part of a larger city, it still retained the feel of a village with its winding streets, lush greenery and quaint houses. Remember that Greenwich Village was always located below the grid of avenues and streets that were proposed in 1811 and would begin on 14th St. and proceed north.

As the population increased, so did crime. The new middle class homeowners no longer relished a prison in their neighborhood, so the prison closed in 1825 making way for Sing Sing to begin construction that same year and perhaps then claim the new destination as a reference for being “sent up the river.”

One cannot overestimate the importance that water has played in the development of New York City. From the entrance at the Atlantic Ocean to the early importance of shipping on the East River, the Lenape and Algonquian tribes fishing and trading on the Hudson River, and perhaps the most important event of all, the opening of the Erie Canal which not only opened the Midwest, but brought shipping to the Hudson River. More ships meant more piers which meant more jobs and more people.

Reading Maritime Mile and writing this article has reaffirmed my gratitude and love for this incredible neighborhood of ours, and all the fascinating and interesting people who have lived and still live here. On every block we have creative, talented, tolerant, intellectual, revolutionary and unique people living in our buildings. A few months ago, my husband, Michael, and I wrote an article entitled Grove Street ─ Then and Now which explored how one little street could have such an impact on history, literature, film, and pop culture. The truth is that every street in Greenwich Village has a history worth researching and recording.

So I implore all the closeted writers out there, as well as the seasoned authors among us, to research your street, write about it and share your findings. How has your street contributed to the legacy of Little Bohemia as it is sometimes called? It is known around the world as a safe haven for misfits, creativity, culture, and tolerance. I know it’s not perfect. It is sometimes too loud, too crowded and too crazy, but in my opinion, it is always interesting, never boring, and in all of my travels, I have not found a place where I would rather live.