Masked Hero: How Wu Lien-teh Invented the Mask That Ended an Epidemic

“Mother and daughter coauthors, both descendants of their subject, trace the course of Wu’s career. . . . Chockablock with timely themes and connections to recent world-shaking events.” —Kirkus Reviews

More than a hundred years before Covid, a deadly pneumonic plague threatened to sweep through Northeast China. Medical experts were summoned to help contain it—among them Wu Lien-teh, who had overcome hurdles to be a doctor since his boyhood in Malaysia. Unlike others, Dr. Wu deduced that the...