Renaissance Men

From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Medical Apartheid, the gripping, untold stories of three unsung Black physicians and their critical contributions to the field of medicine and American culture. Between 1847 and 1952, three New York City doctors transformed medicine, catalyzed racial equity, elevated American culture, then were virtually lost to history—until now. James McCune Smith, MD, Rudolph Fisher, MD and Louis T. Wright, MD, were by no means the only Black American scientists battling oppression. But they harbored a series of overlapping passions—an uncompromising, even militant, abolitionism; medical research that rescinded racial denigration; and literary acumen—all of which they used to drive the evolution of medicine and shape our nation. And, though not strictly contemporaries, they were also bound across time through a series of curious coincidences. Each faced obstacles that parallel those we confront today. Medical exclusion and disparagement,