“Rosen’s highly informed retelling captures the drama of scientists’ quest, against long odds, to find and produce bacteria-killing drugs - and the egos, ambitions, brilliance and resolve that drove them.... It is a strength of “Miracle Cure” that Rosen places its many tales of discovery in their larger contexts...an important contribution to a still-germane yet fast-receding history. And it’s all the more impressive that Rosen, formerly a book editor and publisher, wrote it as he was battling his own intractable disease.” (The Wall Street Journal)

“In Miracle Cure, William Rosen tells the lavish story of antibiotics with the flair and skill of a seasoned novelist, portraying his characters as all too-human, the research often fallible but occasionally transcendent.... Rosen's chronological approach gives the narrative its fluency; his wit and vivid detail make Miracle Cure an absorbing read.... A triumph of science writing that deserves a broad popular audience.” (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

"In this assured chronicle of the 20th-century antibiotics revolution, William Rosen delivers reams of science at a thrilleresque pace. The experimentalists - Gerhard Domagk and Howard Florey among them - are vividly portrayed, as are the patients cured, the pharmaceutical corporations created and the moment in 1943 when bacteriologist Mary Hunt found the ancestor of all penicillin used today, on a mouldy melon. Antibiotic resistance and putative solutions are given their due, including Michael Fischbach's work on microbial-gene clusters in the human microbiome." (Nature)