Why Read Pandemic
Published in 2016, Pandemic is an especially chilling read when viewed through 2020's lens, appearing downright prophetic in some chapters. It presents a startling examination of the pandemics that have ravaged humanity — and shows how history can prepare us to confront the most serious acute global health emergency of our time.
About the Book
Interweaving history, original reportage, and personal narrative, Pandemic explores the origins of epidemics, drawing parallels between the story of cholera—one of history’s most disruptive and deadly pathogens—and the new pathogens that stalk humankind today, from Ebola and coronaviruses to drug-resistant superbugs.
Over 300 infectious diseases have newly emerged or re-emerged in new territory over the past 50 years, and epidemiologists have been predicting that that one of them will cause a disruptive, deadly pandemic for years.
To reveal how that might happen, Shah tracks each stage of cholera’s dramatic journey from harmless microbe to world-changing pandemic, from its 1817 emergence in the South Asian hinterlands to its rapid dispersal across the 19th-century world and its latest beachhead in Haiti. She reports on the pathogens following in cholera’s footsteps, from the MRSA bacterium that besieges her own family to the never-before-seen killers emerging from China’s wet markets, the surgical wards of New Delhi, the slums of Port-au-Prince, and the suburban backyards of the East Coast.
By delving into the convoluted science, strange politics, and checkered history of one of the world’s deadliest diseases, Pandemic reveals what the next contagion might look like—and what we can do to prevent it.
About the Author
Sonia Shah is a science journalist and prizewinning author. Her writing on science, politics, and human rights has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Scientific American, and elsewhere, and she has been featured on Radiolab, Fresh Air, and TED.com, where her talk “Three Reasons We Still Haven’t Gotten Rid of Malaria” has been viewed by more than a million people around the world. Her book The Fever was long-listed for the Royal Society’s Winton Prize for Science Books, and Pandemic was named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice. Her latest book, The Great Migration, was released in June 2020.
+ Praise for Pandemic
“[A] grounded, bracingly intelligent study”
— Nature
"[Shah] has succeeded in producing a lively, rigorously researched and highly informative read."
— The Wall Street Journal
“In this absorbing, complex, and ominous look at the dangers posed by pathogens in our daily lives, science journalist Shah (The Fever) cautions that there are no easy solutions . . . Shah’s warning is certainly troubling, and this important medical and social history is worthy of attention—and action."
— Publishers Weekly
+ Find a Copy
We invite you to acquire a copy of Pandemic from your local library, or consider supporting your local independent bookstore.