What is the author's tone in An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 by Jim Murphy?

An American Plague - The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 is laid out in a clear and concise manner. The author, Jim Murphy, provides many rich descriptions but does not weigh down the story with an overabundance of details. He provides enough information about the devastating disease and the deaths it caused for the reader to understand the dire conditions that the city faced and the suffering of the sick without overwhelming the reader with accounts that merely repeat more of the same. Murphy gives the reader enough credit to understand that a sampling of the devastation was sufficient for the reader to grasp the tragedy. There were some 6,000 deaths from the plague and Murphy, by his selective accounts, provides an appropriate representation of this American tragedy.

The book has a academic feel as the author rarely takes sides in the controversies that emerged both in the medical field and among government officials over the epidemic. For example, he describes the good work of the black nurses during the the epidemic from New African Society accounts. He also includes criticisms of the work of the nurses in a book written after the epidemic ended. In another example, President Washington is portrayed as somewhat out of touch after abandoning the city. The other side of that story is provided as well. He was advised to leave town and was confounded and confused, as were his advisers, as to whether the Constitution allowed him to govern from a city other than the capital which, at the time, was Philadelphia.

The update that Murphy includes in the last chapter of the book is relative and educational. The reader learns how yellow fever is carried and what the source of the disease is and that, although there is a vaccine against yellow fever, there still is no cure.