Robert A. Aronowitz studied linguistics before receiving his M.D. from Yale University. After finishing residency in Internal Medicine, he studied the history of medicine as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr Aronowitz is currently Associate Professor in the History and Sociology of Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania. He continues to practise medicine, holding a joint appointment with the medical school's department of Family Practice and Community Medicine. Dr Aronowitz was the founding director of Penn's Health and Societies program. He also co-directs the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program, a post-doctoral program focused on population health. In 2005–6, he was a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Dr Aronowitz's central research interests are in the history of twentieth-century disease, epidemiology, and population health. He is the author of Making Sense of Illness: Science, Society, and Disease (Cambridge, 1998). Dr Aronowitz is currently working on a historical project on the social framing of health risks, for which he received an Investigator Award in Health Policy from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

"Providing extensive research and case histories, including that of author and environmentalist Rachel Carson, Aronowitz presents his findings here to a national audience." - Library Journal

• 1. Introduction; 2. Cancer in the breast, 1813; 3. Pessimism and promise; 4. Taking responsibility for cancer; 5. Living at risk; 6. 'Do not delay': the war against time; 7. 'Prophets of doom': skeptics of the cancer establishment at mid-century; 8. Balancing hope, trust, and truth: Rachel Carson; 9. The rise of surveillance; 10. Crisis in prevention; 11. Breast cancer risk: 'waiting for the axe to fall'.