Here are 100 books that The Pandemic Century fans have personally recommended if you like
The Pandemic Century.
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I have an annoying habit of figuring out why someone says or believes what they do—and think that is more interesting than their actual ‘truth’. I try to keep this in check during social events (it can make for painful dinner table conversations if I go too far). Still, it means the general take on the medical humanities (and I’d put all the books below in that wide category) is something I’m passionate about. Why do we believe what we do about health? About disease? About the body? And why do we think medical doctors have the truth for us?
I read this book 3 months into the COVID-19 pandemic and LOVED it—it totally made me realize that: 1. we’ve been here before; 2. our reactions and responses are all tried and true (and probably not that useful); and 3. we would survive this time, too—at least most of us.
This is Daniel Defoe (yes, you know him from Robinson Crusoe) explaining what it was like to live in London when the plague came. It wasn’t pretty. The most chilling moment in the book came at the end, when I googled facts about the plague, realized it went away, and then came back repeatedly for decades.
The haunting cry of "Bring out your dead!" by a bell-ringing collector of 17th-century plague victims has filled readers across the centuries with cold terror. The chilling cry survives in historical consciousness largely as a result of this classic 1722 account of the epidemic of bubonic plague — known as the Black Death — that ravaged England in 1664–1665. Actually written nearly 60 years later by Daniel Defoe, the Journal is narrated by a Londoner named "H. F.," who allegedly lived through the devastating effects of the pestilence and produced this eye witness account. Drawing on his considerable talents as…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
My passion for this topic dates back to my childhood and being impressed by the scary diseases and unhygienic toilets that were part of my family lore. I grew up to be a historian of medicine, which allowed me to indulge my interest in deadly diseases—at a safe historical distance! That curiosity led me to write the Gospel of Germs, a history of popular understandings of the germ theory of disease. Post-COVID, I am thinking about how to get ready for the next big pandemic that climate change and globalization will likely throw at us: will it be bird flu, dengue, mpox, or some new COVID variant?
I love this book because Quammen looks at pandemics in terms of the changing relationships between humans and animals. A master of science writing, he explains how global economic and climate change is bringing us closer contact with many species in the wild—bats, parrots, chimpanzees—whose pathogens can “jump” to domestic animals (pigs and chickens). If you are worried about the bird flu, this is a great book to gain perspective on.
In 2020, the novel coronavirus gripped the world in a global pandemic and led to the death of hundreds of thousands. The source of the previously unknown virus? Bats. This phenomenon-in which a new pathogen comes to humans from wildlife-is known as spillover, and it may not be long before it happens again.
Prior to the emergence of our latest health crisis, renowned science writer David Quammen was traveling the globe to better understand spillover's devastating potential. For five years he followed scientists to a rooftop in Bangladesh, a forest in the Congo, a Chinese rat farm, and a…
My passion for this topic dates back to my childhood and being impressed by the scary diseases and unhygienic toilets that were part of my family lore. I grew up to be a historian of medicine, which allowed me to indulge my interest in deadly diseases—at a safe historical distance! That curiosity led me to write the Gospel of Germs, a history of popular understandings of the germ theory of disease. Post-COVID, I am thinking about how to get ready for the next big pandemic that climate change and globalization will likely throw at us: will it be bird flu, dengue, mpox, or some new COVID variant?
Of the many books I’ve read about the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, I especially love this one because Spinney takes a global perspective on the pandemic. Too often the Great Influenza gets narrated only as an Euro-American disaster linked to WWI.
Spinney enthralls by adding the rest of the world—China, India, Africa, and Latin America—to the pandemic mix. Her description of how the flu found Mohandas Gandhi (aka the Mahatma) in his ashram is fascinating.
Read the devastating story of the Spanish flu - the twentieth century's greatest killer - and discover what it can teach us about the current Covid-19 pandemic.
'Both a saga of tragedies and a detective story... Pale Rider is not just an excavation but a reimagining of the past' Guardian
With a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people and a global reach, the Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was the greatest human disaster, not only of the twentieth century, but possibly in all of recorded history. And yet, in our popular conception it exists largely as a footnote…
Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season, drought-stricken, and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967, and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcibly sending its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.
Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he…
I founded Critical Metaphor Analysis, an approach that has become well known in English language studies. My books Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis, Politicians and Rhetoric: The persuasive power of metaphor, and Analysing Political Speeches have over 5,000 citations. I am also ranked first on Google Scholar on political rhetoric. I have always tried (though not always successfully) to write in an accessible style to reach out to audiences beyond academia. As well as lecturing, I assist in the training of Westminster speechwriters. I love languages and speak French, Spanish, Moroccan Arabic, and Malay with varying degrees of incompetence; I have rediscovered the pleasure of watercolour painting.
I found this a fascinating account of the origins and history of quarantine, stretching from medieval times right up to the Covid-19 pandemic, the authors take us on a tour of the many different forms that quarantine has taken in different parts of the world. Quarantine is about finding out what may be hidden within the body but this book reveals much about the different cultural and historical settings where quarantine has been employed. The book helped me understand why the responses to Covid-19 were so diverse in spite of the fact that governments were dealing with the same illness.
'Manaugh and Twilley shed illuminating light on a phenomenon that seems utterly of the present moment.' Financial Times' Best Books of the Year
'Startlingly timely, authoritatively researched, and electrifyingly written.' Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
Quarantine has shaped our world, yet it remains both feared and misunderstood. It is our most powerful response to uncertainty, but it operates through an assumption of guilt: in quarantine, we are considered infectious until proven safe. An unusually poetic metaphor for moral and mythic ills, quarantine means waiting to see if something hidden inside of…
I founded Critical Metaphor Analysis, an approach that has become well known in English language studies. My books Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis, Politicians and Rhetoric: The persuasive power of metaphor, and Analysing Political Speeches have over 5,000 citations. I am also ranked first on Google Scholar on political rhetoric. I have always tried (though not always successfully) to write in an accessible style to reach out to audiences beyond academia. As well as lecturing, I assist in the training of Westminster speechwriters. I love languages and speak French, Spanish, Moroccan Arabic, and Malay with varying degrees of incompetence; I have rediscovered the pleasure of watercolour painting.
Since my mother had polio before vaccinations were available I am especially involved with the issue of vaccination. This book does not pull any punches in taking to task the anti-vaccination movement; by exploring and unpicking its historical, psychological, and sociological basis the author provides a convincing account of the scientific and post-Enlightenment argument in support of vaccine development. He explores the values underlying anti-vaccine sentiments but also offers hard statistical data on the dangers presented when vaccines are avoided. There are many winning arguments in support of the development of vaccinations especially the evidence of the resurgence of diseases such as polio and measles in places where they have been, and are, opposed.
A “clear and insightful” takedown of the anti-vaccination movement, from its 19th-century antecedents to modern-day Facebook activists—with strategies for refuting false claims of friends and family (Financial Times)
Vaccines are a documented success story, one of the most successful public health interventions in history. Yet there is a vocal anti-vaccination movement, featuring celebrity activists (including Kennedy scion Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and actress Jenny McCarthy) and the propagation of anti-vax claims through books, documentaries, and social media. In Anti-Vaxxers, Jonathan Berman explores the phenomenon of the anti-vaccination movement, recounting its history from its nineteenth-century antecedents to today’s activism, examining its…
I founded Critical Metaphor Analysis, an approach that has become well known in English language studies. My books Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis, Politicians and Rhetoric: The persuasive power of metaphor, and Analysing Political Speeches have over 5,000 citations. I am also ranked first on Google Scholar on political rhetoric. I have always tried (though not always successfully) to write in an accessible style to reach out to audiences beyond academia. As well as lecturing, I assist in the training of Westminster speechwriters. I love languages and speak French, Spanish, Moroccan Arabic, and Malay with varying degrees of incompetence; I have rediscovered the pleasure of watercolour painting.
This book by an anthropologist explores the dynamics of anti-vaccine rumours: how they are initiated and how – like a virus – they spread. She uses the metaphor of fire, and since I also wrote a book on this topic I am interested in this metaphor. She takes into account the emotional basis for anxiety about vaccinations among both the vaccine hesitant and among vaccine opponents. While rejecting the validity of their arguments, she nevertheless makes these more likely to be overcome by offering a nuanced account of some of the emotional and psychological reasons for such beliefs. It’s a kind and thoughtful book.
Vaccine reluctance and refusal are no longer limited to the margins of society. Debates around vaccines' necessity - along with questions around their side effects - have gone mainstream, blending with geopolitical conflicts, political campaigns, celebrity causes, and "natural" lifestyles to win a growing number of hearts and minds. Today's anti-vaccine positions find audiences where they've never existed previously.
Stuck examines how the issues surrounding vaccine hesitancy are, more than anything, about people feeling left out of the conversation. A new dialogue is long overdue, one that addresses the many types of vaccine hesitancy and the social factors that perpetuate…
Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…
My passion for this topic dates back to my childhood and being impressed by the scary diseases and unhygienic toilets that were part of my family lore. I grew up to be a historian of medicine, which allowed me to indulge my interest in deadly diseases—at a safe historical distance! That curiosity led me to write the Gospel of Germs, a history of popular understandings of the germ theory of disease. Post-COVID, I am thinking about how to get ready for the next big pandemic that climate change and globalization will likely throw at us: will it be bird flu, dengue, mpox, or some new COVID variant?
Of the many riveting books written about the other “big one” of the 20th century—the AIDs pandemic, still ongoing—I especially love France’s account because it combines the power of a personal memoir with a “you are there” description of the plague’s unfolding in the United States.
I also like how France shows the positives in an otherwise tragic story. When faced with a deadly new disease, grassroots activists waged brilliant fights to get attention to its dangers and, in the process, changed American science for the good.
Winner of The Green Carnation Prize for LGBTQ literature
Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT non-fiction
Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2017
'This superbly written chronicle will stand as a towering work in its field' Sunday Times
'Inspiring, uplifting and necessary reading' - Steve Silberman author of Neurotribes, Financial Times
How to Survive a Plague by David France is the riveting, powerful and profoundly moving story of the AIDS epidemic and the grass-roots movement of activists, many of them facing their own life-or-death struggles, who grabbed the reins of scientific research to help develop the drugs that…
My passion for this topic dates back to my childhood and being impressed by the scary diseases and unhygienic toilets that were part of my family lore. I grew up to be a historian of medicine, which allowed me to indulge my interest in deadly diseases—at a safe historical distance! That curiosity led me to write the Gospel of Germs, a history of popular understandings of the germ theory of disease. Post-COVID, I am thinking about how to get ready for the next big pandemic that climate change and globalization will likely throw at us: will it be bird flu, dengue, mpox, or some new COVID variant?
I'll admit this recommendation may seem offbeat, but given my anxieties about catastrophe, I am weirdly drawn to the history of what is known as “prepping”: people who actively prepare for events, such as a plague, that threaten to take us back to a Stone Age style of living.
Lynda King, a freelance writer who’s active in her own community’s preparedness planning, offers a fascinating account of the people and groups who have built bomb shelters, stockpiled food, drugs, and weapons, and otherwise gotten ready for the end of the world.
The word ‘prepper’ seems to have burst onto the scene within the last 10 years, and has increasingly become associated with “fringe” extremists. They have been labeled by some as “domestic terrorists.” But is prepping a new phenomenon? Or is it a manifestation of a growing collective psyche that has learned, from traumatic events throughout our history, that preparedness is critical to human survival? For new preppers who think the worst is yet to come, this book offers a walk through history that shows the worst has been here before. For those who wonder why so many people are concerned…
I’ve been managing projects for over 20 years, and I’ve noticed that the pace of work is getting faster. I’ve certainly needed a helping hand to stay relevant and to keep up, and I’ve always been interested in how other people manage their working lives and To-do lists. I don’t always agree with the approaches in books or find that they work for me, but having a wide toolbox of strategies is great when I’m mentoring professionals. I can suggest things I’ve tried and also things that might work for them. I hope you get something out of my recommendations in the same way that I’ve grown from them!
I work remotely most of the time, and leading virtual project teams (or any teams) is a real challenge. I used to be able to catch people in the office, but the world of work has changed now, and I have to rely on different strategies.
This book is packed with strategies and I enjoyed learning new ways of being able to connect with my teams even though we are no longer in the same office most of the time. The book taught me about having the right mindset for virtual leadership and I loved all the different case studies and stories that helped illustrate good (and not-so-good) ways of working.
The future of work is virtual, with dispersed teams, telecommuting, remote working and virtual meetings becoming the norm across sectors and industries around the world. However leading virtual teams requires a new set of skills and a facilitative leadership approach, Virtual Leadership is here to help. At its best, virtual working can be productive and creative, tapping into the best people wherever they are and bringing skills and experience together efficiently and at low cost. But it can also lead to isolated and disengaged workers, ineffective communication, and uncoordinated and even counter-productive activity. Virtual Leadership provides practical strategies, tools and…
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
by
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
I’m puzzled by how people and technology evolve—as humankind we created all of these wonders to make our life easier. At the same time, I feel that we are more focus on the technology and processes, rather than people. It drew me to the topic of sociotechnical systems, which fascinates me. I’ve formal education in IT, and everything is binary; however, during my career I was drawn to the intersection of technology and people. My mission in life is to support a new generation of leaders that want to create an organisational environment that puts people in the center!
In my quest (you can also call it a professional career), I’m drawn to complexity since we create software for complex problems. There are books on Complexity Science; however, they are very academic. This particular book gives practical advice to cope with complexity. It acknowledges the balance between the emotional and rational sides and why we must bring our full-self to any aspect of our life. The “don’t be emotional, this is work” proves to be a threat to our mental well-being and kills innovation in a company. In the book, the authors explore how to listen to our bodies in the face of complexity in an accessible way.
There is a complexity paradox that we all need to understand. We humans have a natural inclination towards connection, engagement, and creativity - all necessary skills to thrive in complexity. The problem is that the stress caused by uncertainty and ambiguity makes it difficult to tap into this inclination when we need it the most. This book offers a set of practices that help you not only understand complexity but actually hack into your own nervous system to bring your natural capacities back online. By paying close attention to your body, redefining your emotional experiences, and connecting more deeply to…
