Polio across the Iron Curtain: Hungary's Cold War with an Epidemic by Dóra Vargha

Dora Vargha’s history of Hungary’s fight against polio in the 1950s combines social, cultural, and political to demonstrate how Cold War politics were central this story. She also challenges generally held perceptions iron curtain as impenetrable demonstrates, at least case polio, that border between east west was much more porous than thought. By highlighting contradictions, such global acceptance epidemic control methods same time Hungarian government persona non grata West, Vargha demonstrates complicated paradoxical nature relationship with western countries time.