98 Books Like The Promise of Plague Wolves

This book is an optimistic narration about one of the most amazing and important achievements in medical history.

It is written by Donald Henderson, the doctor who led the eradication campaign against the arguably most severe and incurable disease in history. Smallpox killed or disabled hundreds of millions of people and remains so far the only virus to have been deliberately eradicated globally.

This story is an ode to the unlimited power of science, education, and multilateralism. It shows how, led by a few people and a lot of positive stamina, the world got together and overcame all hurdles despite technical challenges and political division in a highly fragmented post-war world.

Echoing recent events with Covid – and hopefully providing a blueprint for tackling climate change – it shows how we can stand together when circumstances require it and achieve what seemed for ages completely impossible. An inspiring example for… show more.

I enjoy stories about unsolved crimes, and Emma Donoghue starts with a murder in 1876 San Francisco and builds a story around a character trying to solve the crime.

The main characters, Burlesque dancer Blanche and frog catcher Jenny, quickly drew me into the story. When Jenny is murdered, Blanche believes she knows who murdered Jenny—and thinks she is responsible. I loved how Donoghue captured the rough and gritty San Francisco of the times.

I’m a great fan of author’s notes at the end of historical novels, and Donoghue’s lengthy afterword reveals much about what parts of the novel are based on fact and which imagined—and how she went about researching the story.

This is a little historical gem. The author was the wife of the British consul to Constantinople in 1718 and wrote copious letters home detailing her travels and her life in the Ottoman Empire’s capital. She describes the exoticism, the requirement that women be veiled in public (which she saw as freeing), the sumptuous jewels and wealth, the admiration of pregnant women (and the pressure to be pregnant to prove you were still young).   

Her description of smallpox ‘parties’ is particularly interesting. These gatherings were held annually to inoculate children by using a tiny amount of smallpox pus scratched into the forearm. A survivor of smallpox herself, Mary had her own small son successfully inoculated and brought the knowledge back with her to England, but it was not until Edward Jenner introduced a vaccine later in the century that a treatment became more widely known.

I can’t describe this book better than the author describes it: “While the American Revolution may have defined the era for history, epidemic smallpox nevertheless defined it for many of the Americans who lived and died in that time” (p. 273, 275).

Most of what I thought I knew about the Revolutionary War period ended up adjusted after reading this book. In straightforward prose that still manages to be poetic, Pox Americana forced me to examine both my educational history and the ways I had ingested and processed my education. 

This 4-volume serialized graphic novel tells the story of an Indigenous family across centuries and generations, stretching from Indigenous history before colonialism to ongoing colonial violence in Residential Schools until the present world of a Cree youth in existential crisis as he attempts to take his own life. His mother then guides him on a path of personal healing from his intergenerational trauma through stories about their history and traditions; Edwin’s journey takes him into the heart of ceremony and connection with his culture and history. He discovers his own strength to heal and then offers his father the opportunity to find his own healing path.

In this graphic novel, we are educated about Indigenous history through stories of struggle, resilience, and resurgence across the centuries. As Edwin, guided by his mother, meets with Elders, embraces his Cree identity, and pursues a path of healing through traditional teachings and practices,… show more.

Reading just one newspaper advertisement for a runaway slave makes New York slavery real. Reading an entire book filled with more than 750 advertisements haunted me, especially when I found notices written by my own Dutch ancestors, like Coxsackie’s Hendrick Hoeghtelen, who in 1761 advertised for a man named Anthony, who spoke good Spanish, had one eye, and was marked with smallpox. Whatever became of Anthony? I wish I knew.

The combination of actual copies of the ads alongside transcription added to the power of the book. I come back to its pages again and again. 

This 1974 book, by the founder of one of the world’s great picture libraries, was a real eye-opener to me when I first read it. We are all nostalgic and look at the past through rose-tinted glasses, and so do I. But then we forget about the hunger and the crime, tuberculosis, smallpox and heaps of trash on the streets, the child labor, and the despair of the aged. This richly illustrated book, with its multitude of stories, set me straight. For instance, did you know that New York had 150,000 horses in 1900, each producing around 20 pounds of manure a day? The past stank. It makes you deeply grateful for science, technology, and economic growth.

This evocative book addresses the conundrum of writing about an Indigenous place barely mentioned in narratives foundational to U.S. history. For Fenn, this was the ancestral homeland of the Mandan of the Northern Plains, once a flourishing hub of Native life.

This is history-writing at its finest, expertly braided from threads of archaeological, climatic, geological, epidemiological, and ethnographic evidence and enriched by Fenn’s eye-opening journey to North Dakota. Neither denying the impacts of European-American settler expansion nor portraying the Mandan merely as passive victims, the book led me on a journey of discovery that revealed complex interrelationships of colonialism, geography, and Indigenous persistence.

Dr. Larry, as he is known to our Neem Karoli Baba satsang (the community of seekers), has written a tour de force memoir of his extraordinary adventures, starting as a young hippie doctor in Detroit and moving on to cofounding one of the first digital social networks (The WELL), cofounding the Seva Foundation (restoring sight to millions of blind people), and being a key player in eradicating smallpox.

He is chair of the Skoll Global Threats Fund and the epidemiologist California Governor Newsom called upon to set up COVID protocols for the entertainment industry. To me, the deepest value of Sometimes Brilliant is the way it illustrates how science and service to humanity combine with spiritual awareness and love—the perfect mix of karma yoga and bhakti (service and devotion).

This is a beast of a thriller at 700 pages, but I thoroughly enjoyed the deep dive nevertheless. American ex-spy Pilgrim is pitched against a Saudi mujahideen fighter known as the Saracen, who is bent on avenging himself against the United States with a chillingly devastating plan.

Both protagonist and antagonist are well fleshed out with detailed backstories that make the character development top-notch in this murder mystery-turned-spy terrorism thriller. There's an interesting switch between first and third person, which I've rarely encountered.

I found it quite engrossing, and many scenes linger long after I put the book down. It's a solid thriller that I could really get my teeth into.