SOURCE: "The Fever Days," in New York Times Book Review, November 3, 1996, p. 20.

Birkerts is a noted critic and author of several books, including The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (1995). In the following review, he offers a negative appraisal of The Cattle Killing.

In August 1793, an epidemic of yellow fever broke out in Philadelphia. Chaos prevailed. Doctors (including Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence) struggled for cure and containment. The rich either barricaded themselves in their houses or fled, while the less fortunate shifted for themselves. There was widespread looting. What better test for the City of Brotherly Love?

The novelist and short-story writer John Edgar Wideman has had a longstanding interest both in Philadelphia and in this particular historical moment. His previous novel, Philadelphia Fire, applied a collage technique to various events leading toward and away from the 1985 Move bombings...