About this item
From the much admired medical historian, author of An Anatomy of Addiction, the story of the two Kellogg brothers: one who became America's most beloved physician between the mid-nineteenth century and World War II, a best-selling author, lecturer and health magazine publisher who was read by millions, and founder of the world-famous Battle Creek Sanitarium in 1876; the other, his younger brother, who founded in 1906 the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company.In The Kelloggs, Howard Markel tells the sweeping American saga of these two extraordinary men whose lifelong competition with, and enmity toward, each other changed America's notion of health and wellness, and who helped to alter the course of American medicine as it emerged from the ashes of superstition and quackery into our modern era of healing, cures, and prevention.Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, internationally known and revered, at the center of the most significant century of medicine for almost seventy years, creator of the Battle Creek Sanitarium; America's patron saint of the pursuit of wellness . . .His brother, Will, who, with John, experimented with malt, wheat, and corn meal to make a product he called corn flakes, followed by puffed rice, shredded wheat, bran flakes, and toasted oat cereals.Will saw the cereals as a potential gold mine after a former patient of Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium, C. W. Post, stole Kellogg's recipes in 1895 (they were never copyrighted; John saw them as his gift to humanity) and opened his own food company in Battle Creek. (C. W. Post's Post Toasties--his version of corn flakes--his Grape Nuts, a wheat-based cereal containing neither grapes nor nuts; and Postum, a bran- and molasses-based coffee substitute, were devoured by millions.) The Post Cereal Company eventually became General Foods.Will founded his own cereal company in 1906, the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, later the Kellogg Company, creating a financial bounty that resulted in endless lawsuits between the brothers. Among the many Kellogg's products that became household staples are Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, All-Bran, Special K, Sugar Frosted Flakes ("They're Great!") , Froot Loops, Eggo waffles, Pop-Tarts, Keebler cookies and even Pringles potato chips.Markel writes of the Kelloggs' ascent into the pantheon of American industrialists by building the Battle Creek Sanitarium (it became a world famous medical center, spa, and grand hotel) . Among his patients: Mary Todd Lincoln, Amelia Earhart, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Johnny Weissmuller, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Eddie Cantor, and U.S. presidents from William Howard Taft to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
About the Author
Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D., an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author, is the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine and Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. He also holds professorial appointments in Psychiatry, Public Health, History, English Literature and Language, and Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases. He was born in Detroit, Michigan on April 23, 1960 and grew up in Oak Park and Southfield, Michigan. Educated at the University of Michigan (A.B., 1982, summa cum laude; M.D., 1986, cum laude) and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Hospital (Intern, Resident and Fellow in General Pediatrics, 1986-1993 and Ph.D, in the History of Medicine, Science and Technology, 1994) , he joined the University of Michigan faculty in 1993.A critically acclaimed social and cultural historian of medicine, Dr. Markel is the author, co-author, or co-editor of ten books including the award winning Quarantine! East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997; paperback, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) and When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the Fears They Have Unleashed (Pantheon Books/Alfred A. Knopf, 2004; paperback Vintage/Random House, 2005) . His most recent book, An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine (Pantheon Books/Alfred A. Knopf) was published in July, 2011 and was a New York Times Best Seller, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Seller, an ABA IndieBound Best Seller, and a New York Times Book Review "Editor's Choice".From 2005 to 2006, Professor Markel served as a historical consultant on pandemic influenza preparedness planning for the United States Department of Defense. From 2006 to the present, he serves as the principal historical consultant on pandemic preparedness for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From late April 2009 to February 2011, served as a member of the CDC Director's "Novel A/H1N1 Influenza Team B", a real-time think tank of experts charged with evaluating the federal government's influenza policies on a daily basis during the outbreak. In collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he is Editor-in Chief of The 1918-1919 American Influenza Pandemic: A Digital Encyclopedia and Archive. Funded by grants and contracts from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the CDC, the digital encyclopedia is at www.influenzaarchive.org. Working with the CDC and a team of historians at the Center for the History of Medicine, Professor Markel currently directs a research team of medical historians at work on documenting the social history of the 2009 H1N1 Influenza pandemic. The second edition of the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic: A Digital Encyclopedia and
