As the world’s population comes better to understand the complex relationships at the population level, brave and knowledgeable researchers will need to ask questions to assess needs and address them. Understanding the disease and learning how to treat it is challenging but studying disease on a population level requires unique skills. For me, epidemiology has been the nexus to connect my early medical training to my current scholarship, teaching, and mentorship I am engaged in. The book you hold chronicles Dr. W Sumner Davis’ journey through the world of epidemiology, public health, and politics. From the first advances in early medicine, the twenty case accounts presented in narrative, to the modern age with its politics of health, the various concepts are familiar to treatment and prevention. Dr. Davis challenges the idea that we should be passive recipients of healthcare and takes readers through the process of using the knowledge to become self-advocates. He asks readers to think of leading public health agencies and understand basic concepts like descriptive epidemiological measures to concepts of biosurveilance.