Sonia Shah's ( Author of The Fever ) Pandemic tracks contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond
"Shah's book should be required reading," — The New York Review of Books
"The lessons of history should give us pause...Many [ Issues ] are brilliantly exposed in Ms. Shah's book, Pandemic." — W.F. Bynum, The Wall Street Journal
From the dust jacket of Pandemic: Over the past fifty years, more than three hundred infectious diseases have either newly emerged or reemerged, appearing in territories where they've never been seen before.
By unraveling the story of how pathogens have caused pandemics in the past, we can make predictions about the future.
Page 13: ...It begins in the bodies of wild animals around us. In the past, the forces that drove pandemics were obscure to their victims. In the nineteenth century people carried cholera across the seas on ships and canals, allowed it to spread in the crowded slums and through their commercial transactions, and made its symptoms more deadly with their medicines without knowing how or why. Today, as we standoff the cusp of the next pandemic ( written in 2016 ), the multistage journey from hapless microbe to pandemic causing pathogen is no longer invisible. Each stage can be laid bare for all to see.
Chapter headings: The Jump, Locomotion, Filth, Crowds, Corruption, Blame, The Cure, Revenge of the Sea, The Logic of Pandemics, Tracking the Next Contagion