Author Stephen Coss Visits North Haven Library

From the North Haven Library:

Author Stephen Coss presented Pat LaTerza, Assistant Director of the North Haven Library with a copy of his new book, “The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic that Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics.“ In this book, Coss brings to life an amazing cast of characters in a year that changed the course of medical history, American journalism, and colonial revolution.

Included are Cotton Mather, the great Puritan preacher, son of the president of Harvard College; Zabdiel Boylston, a doctor whose name is on one of Boston's grand avenues; James and his younger brother Benjamin Franklin; and Elisha Cooke and his protege; Samuel Adams.

During the worst smallpox epidemic in Boston history Mather convinced Doctor Boylston to try a procedure that he believed would prevent death--by making an incision in the arm of a healthy person and implanting it with smallpox. "Inoculation" led to vaccination, one of the most profound medical discoveries in history. A copy of the book is available for request at the library.

Stephen Coss moved to North Haven shortly before he began middle school. He attended North Haven Junior High and North Haven High School (Class of 1975). He spent many evenings doing homework and researching reports at the North Haven Memorial Library, where he developed his love of reading and writing. He received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Temple University, Philadelphia, and spent the next two decades working as a writer and creative director for the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency and other ad agencies in Chicago, Detroit, and Madison, Wisconsin.

In 1993 he received a fact-a-day calendar with a page dedicated to the Boston smallpox inoculation experiment of 1721—the first time in Western medicine that inoculation was used against a deadly disease. Steve had never heard of the inoculation experiment, but he sensed it would make a great story. His first instinct was to turn the story into a screenplay for a feature film. He wrote a draft of that screenplay, but abandoned the project.

More than a decade later, he mentioned the screenplay to a friend who had recently published his first book. Steve’s friend urged him to expand the screenplay into a full-length non-fiction book. It took Steve seven years to research, write and revise what would become The Fever of 1721. In March 2016 Simon & Schuster published it to positive reviews from prominent publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Book Review, and Library Journal.

Steve currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin, but makes regular visits to North Haven, which he still considers home. When he isn’t researching and writing history or working in marketing communications he serves as a Wisconsin election official. He and his wife have four sons and an African Grey Parrot named Frankie.

PHOTO: STEPHEN COSS, MARY COSS, PAT LATERZA