Columbus Day or Contagion Day: disease "arrives" in America -- "Deus flavit nasus et dissipati sunt": the Protestant wind and the Catholic flu -- Pocahontas and the plague: the English and disease in the conquest of the colonies -- "The paths to glory lead but to the grave": disease in the early French and Indian Wars -- "Pestilence gave them a common death": disease and the English conquest of North America -- Typhus and taxation: disease and the American Revolution -- A nation forged in gout and expanded by venereal disease: a medical look at the early republic -- Montezuma's revenge: disease and manifest destiny -- Johnny Dysentery and Billy Typhus: disease and the Civil War -- Remember the Maine, to hell with yellow fever: imperialism and illness -- Love in the age of cholera, warfare in the age of typhoid: progressivism and pestilence -- Bullets, bayonets, and botulism: biological warfare in the twentieth century -- Al-Qaeda, anthrax, and America: terrorism and disease in post-Cold War America.