David M.Oshinsky, PhD, is a professor of history at New York University and the director of the NYU School of Medicine's Division of Medical Humanities. Polio: An American Tale won him the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2005. Among his other works are the D.B. A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy, which won the Hardeman Award, and Worse Than Slavery Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice, which won the Robert Kennedy Prize. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal publish his essays and reviews on a regular basis.