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Conjuring the State is a breathtaking, unforgettable study of the invention of public health in early twentieth-century Ecuador. By focusing on the pragmatics of public health work—what is to be done and how?—at a time when few models existed for it, Clark demonstrates how state systems actually get built, slowly and contentiously, over time. Through meticulous, painstaking work with uncataloged archives, Clark tells a story that is at once deeply sensitive to the nuances of the Ecuadorian case and revelatory of the links between public health and state formation more broadly, with implications up to the present.