Unmasked is the story of what happened in Okoboji, a small Iowan tourist town, when a collective turn from the coronavirus to the economy occurred in the COVID summer of 2020. State political failures, local negotiations among political and public health leaders, and community (dis)belief about the virus resulted in Okoboji being declared a hotspot just before the Independence Day weekend, when an influx of half a million people visit the town.

The story is both personal and political. Author Emily Mendenhall, an anthropologist at Georgetown University, grew up in Okoboji, and her family still lives there. As the events unfolded, Mendenhall was in Okoboji, where she spoke formally with over 100 people and observed a community that rejected public health guidance, revealing deep-seated mistrust in outsiders and strong commitments to local thinking. Unmasked is a fascinating and heartbreaking account of where people put their trust, and how isolationist popular beliefs can be in America's small communities.

“An essential read for understanding these increasingly disunited states. Mendenhall artfully unravels and interrogates the complex, layered histories and ideologies underpinning belief in science and trust in institutions.”
—Seema Yasmin, author of Viral BS: Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them
“Vital to encouraging others to look more deeply into their assumptions about what motivates people under the stress of a pandemic. . . . Interesting, engaging, and important.”
—Prabhjot Singh, author of Dying and Living in the Neighborhood: A Street-Level View of America’s Healthcare Promise
“Unmasked does a masterful job of documenting the breakdown of America’s COVID-19 response and the invaluable lessons we can learn to avert future crises.”
—Madhukar Pai, professor of epidemiology and global health, McGill University
“This is a must-read for understanding COVID-19 in America.”
—Devi Sridhar, coauthor of Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why?
“Mendenhall sublimely weaves together culture, behavior, society, and politics as deeper explanations of why we failed so badly in the COVID-19 response.”
—Lawrence O. Gostin, author of Global Health Security: A Blueprint for the Future
“Emily Mendenhall uses the eye of a medical anthropologist and the ear of an insider to explore the reaction of her conservative hometown in northwest lowa to the COVID-19 outbreak.”
—Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times, Storm Lake, Iowa

Emily Mendenhall is a professor of global health in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is the author of Rethinking Diabetes: Entanglements of Trauma, Poverty, and HIV and Syndemic Suffering: Social Distress, Depression, and Diabetes among Mexican Immigrant Women and co-editor of Global Mental Health: Anthropological Perspectives.