• The Challenge of Epidemiology: Issues and Selected Readings. PAHO

  A compendium of 91 landmark articles in the evolution of epidemiology, with the editors' assessments of the realm of epidemiology, where it is and where it should be going. PAHO, which produced it, says that “It represents a useful tool for both students and practicing professionals and provides a much-needed frame of reference for reorienting the practice of epidemiology”. Available in electronic format.

• Morabia, Alfredo. History of epidemiologic methods and concepts. Birkhauser, 2005.

The first part of the book presents the evolution of epidemiologic methods and concepts, serving as introduction and synthesis to the second part, which is a collection of papers from a 1996 workshop held in Annecy, France. The papers were originally published in Social and Preventive Medicine (International Journal of Public Health), which has made them available online.

• Susser, Mervyn. Epidemiology, health, and society. Selected papers. NY, Oxford, 1987.

  Papers dealing with the logic of judgment about causal inference and about the social context of epidemiologic studies and of health in general.

• Ashton, John (ed). The epidemiological imagination: a reader. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 1994.

  Classic readings in epidemiology.

• Rothman, Kenneth J. (ed). Causal inference. Newton Lower Falls, MA, Epidemiology Resources Inc., 1991. Paperback.

  Papers and commentaries, originally presented at a symposium on philosophy of causal inference during the Annual meeting of the Society for Epidemiologic Research, Chapel Hill, NC, 1985.

• Greenland, Sander (ed). Evolution of epidemiologic ideas. Newton Lower Falls, MA, Epidemiology Resources Inc., 1987. Paperback.

  A collection of seminal articles in the evolution of methodologic concepts.

• Coughlin, Steven S. Ethics in epidemiology and clinical research. Annotated readings. Newton Lower Falls, MA, Epidemiology Resources Inc., 1995. Paperback.


• Coughlin, Steven S. Ethics in epidemiology and public health practice: collected works. Atlanta, Majors Scientific Books (booksatl@majors.com, 1997


• Walter W. Holland, Jørn Olsen, and Charles du V. Florey (eds)The development of modern epidemiology. Oxford Univ Press, 2007 (link)


• Hulley, Stephen B. and Steven R. Cummings. Designing clinical research: An epidemiologic approach. Baltimore, Williams & Wilkins, 1988.


• Anderson, Roy M., Robert M. May. Infectious diseases of humans: dynamics and control. NY, Oxford, 1991, 757pp (reviewed in Science October 10, 1991, p591) - mathematical models


• Gehlbach, Stephen H. Interpreting the medical literature: a clinician's guide. Collamore Press, Lexington, MA, 1982.

  This book is a guide to critical reading of the medical literature, with emphasis on appraisal of research methods and the ways in which data are analyzed and interpreted.

• Holland, Walter W. (editor in chief), Roger Detels, George Knox (eds). Oxford textbook of public health (4 volumes). NY, Oxford, 1985. A major reference work.



• Gail, Mitchell H., Jacques Benichou. Encyclopedia of epidemiologic methods. NY, Wiley Reference Series in Biostatistics. ISBN 0471 86641 5



• Last, John M. A Dictionary of Epidemiology, 4 ed., NY: Oxford, 2000

As can be seen from the above list, Oxford University Press publishes a large series of books in epidemiology and biostatistics, which in addition to the above citations, has numerous other titles of interest to epidemiologists.

Historical public health pamphlets published in the US between 1840 and 1960 (10,000 of them) have been cataloged by the New York Academy of Medicine Library, with a grant from the The Charles E. Culpeper Foundation. The cataloging records are available at ( www.nyam.org/history or telnet library.nyam.org) and through the major bibliographic utilities. The Academy Library has systematically collected materials which document public action to avoid disease and other health threats, the shaping of modern public health, and the history of public health and the sanitary movement.