Within Reason

A Liberal Public Health for an Illiberal Time

Sandro Galea author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:The University of Chicago Press

Published:9th Jan '24

Should be back in stock very soon

Within Reason cover

A provocative chronicle of how US public health has strayed from its liberal roots.

The Covid-19 response was a crucible of politics and public health—a volatile combination that produced predictably bad results. As scientific expertise became entangled with political motivations, the public-health establishment found itself mired in political encampment.

It was, as Sandro Galea argues, a crisis of liberalism: a retreat from the principles of free speech, open debate, and the pursuit of knowledge through reasoned inquiry that should inform the work of public health.

Across fifty essays, Within Reason chronicles how public health became enmeshed in the insidious social trends that accelerated under Covid-19. Galea challenges this intellectual drift towards intolerance and absolutism while showing how similar regressions from reason undermined social progress during earlier eras. Within Reason builds an incisive case for a return to critical, open inquiry as a guiding principle for the future public health we want—and a future we must work to protect.

"Despite remarkable successes, Galea argues, public health succumbed to a disturbing strain of illiberalism during the pandemic. . . .Galea makes a powerful case that to carry the worst illiberal outcomes from the pandemic into the next crisis would be a devastating mistake." -- Pamela Paul * The New York Times *
"Galea is a good companion in navigating readers through the political thickets in which public health now operates. [Within Reason] is not about COVID-19, but the pandemic was an enormous stress test of public health and thrust public health into the center of politics and media attention." * The Lancet *
"In Within Reason, Galea provides a collection of his own essays to explore how the pandemic impacted public health in the US, alongside other general issues the pandemic exposed. In addition to providing incisive analysis on this topic, Galea’s essays provide a powerful and thought-provoking look at the trends in public health that were accelerated due to the pandemic." * Choice *
"Within Reason provides a lucid examination of how the pandemic set in motion a gradual disenchantment with many of the liberal values that underlie the work of public health. For readers who are receptive, the book delivers a thoughtful set of ideas for moving forward while, at the same time, reclaiming a liberal approach to public health policy." * Health Affairs *
"Erudite, well written and thought-provoking." * The Spinoff Review of Books *
"Galea’s book certainly covers many of the issues facing public health today and as such is required reading for those in the discipline or even those dependent on it for policy formation. . . .Galea is trying to resurrect the public health discipline from the illiberal quagmire of its ideological politicalization by re-founding it on liberalism. The question is whether public health, and to some extent science itself, can be resurrected within reason." * Metascience *
"[Within Reason] considers the case for a liberal public health policy, presenting reflections on the issues facing the field of public health in the United States and the efforts to establish and sustain a liberal public health policy. Examines the structural forces that shape health and how they have been shaped by the illiberalism of the contemporary political sphere." * Journal of Economic Literature *
“Powerful, erudite, and immersive—an essential treatise on our needed reformation in public health.” -- Alonzo Plough | Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
“With equal dose of empathy and examination, Sandro Galea challenges us to undertake a deep exercise of self-reflection: how our hard-won political beliefs may betray us in the hope for a greater good. Within Reason is critically relevant for each of us—and all of us.” -- Julio Frenk | University of Miami

ISBN: 9780226822914

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 23mm

Weight: 367g

304 pages