The Book

Thomas Levenson is a professor of science writing at MIT and the author of multiple books on science history, including So Very Small. His next book, A Pox on Fools: The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines, publishes June 9, 2026, from Random House. It retails at $28 hardcover, $13.99 ebook, $15 audiobook, according to both Penguin Random House and Barnes & Noble.

It is NOT out yet. Everything below reflects what advance reviews and publisher materials say the book argues.

What the Book Actually Says

Levenson's central argument, as detailed by Ars Technica in a preview: anti-vaccine rhetoric is ancient. It did NOT start with the internet. It did NOT start with Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent 1998 MMR study. It goes back to at least 1721, when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in London and Cotton Mather in Boston launched the first Western smallpox inoculation campaigns.

The backlash was immediate and roughly identical to what you hear today.

According to Publishers Weekly's advance review, Levenson identifies the same recurring playbook across 300 years:

• Religious objection: Vaccination is "a prideful intervention in God's plan."
• Naturalist objection: Vaccines are unnatural; clean living is all you need.
• Liberty objection: Compulsory vaccination violates individual freedom.
• Poison panic: Vaccines inject "extraneous and poisonous matter" into children.

That last one comes from an 1805 pamphlet. Word for word, it could be a Facebook post from 2021.

The Three Types of Opponents

Levenson's taxonomy is the real contribution here. He breaks down vaccine opponents into three categories, per Ars Technica:

True believers genuinely think vaccines are dangerous. They're wrong, but they're sincere.

Grifters know better and don't care. They're selling supplements, books, or political identity. The profit motive is real and documented.

Cynics are the most dangerous category — people who understand the science is sound but undermine it anyway for ideological or political gain.

The solution is different for each group. You can educate a true believer. You cannot educate a grifter out of a revenue stream.

Where Mainstream Coverage Gets This Wrong

Most media coverage of vaccine hesitancy treats it as a recent political phenomenon — a post-2016 or post-COVID problem tied to one party, one president, or one Facebook algorithm.

Levenson's historical record shows vaccine opposition has existed across every political demographic, every era, and every country that has ever tried mass vaccination. Walt Whitman — not exactly a MAGA icon — railed against vaccines as unnatural interventions alongside steamboats and gunpowder, according to Publishers Weekly. Whitman, per Levenson, "sketched much of what would become the modern wellness program" in his Manly Health and Training.

The wellness industry and the anti-vaccine movement share a family tree. Both left-leaning health reporters and right-leaning populist commentators have reasons to avoid this connection.

What Levenson Gets Right — And What Deserves a Fair Challenge

His historical research appears rigorous. The parallel between an 1805 poison pamphlet and 2021 social media posts is striking.

He also deserves credit for NOT whitewashing the history of vaccine failures. According to Publishers Weekly, Levenson directly addresses the 1955 Cutter incident, in which a batch of Salk polio vaccines contained live virus and caused paralysis and death in children. That's NOT a conspiracy theory. That happened. Acknowledging it honestly is what separates legitimate science communication from propaganda.

The fair challenge to his framework: lumping all vaccine skeptics into "grifters, cynics, and true believers" risks dismissing legitimate questions about specific vaccines, specific mandates, or specific regulatory failures. The 1955 Cutter incident is proof that skepticism of a particular vaccine program, in a particular context, can be warranted. The book apparently engages with this.

The Stanley Plotkin Quote

Ars Technica opens with a quote from Stanley Plotkin, 94, one of the most consequential vaccine scientists in history — the man largely responsible for the rubella vaccine. His recent public statement: he is "beginning to regret having lived so long — because we're going downhill."

A 94-year-old scientist who spent his life preventing childhood death and paralysis is watching the public throw that work away — not because the science changed, but because grifters found a market and cynics found a voter base.

Conclusion

Levenson's book isn't available yet, but the advance case is strong: three centuries of the same bad arguments, the same three types of people making them, and the same predictable outcomes when they win. Children get sick. Some die.

The grifters bank the money. The cynics win the election. The true believers feel vindicated.

And the rest of us pay the price.