books tagged “epidemic”

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The Andromeda Strain
by Michael Crichton

ISBN 0060541814 (0-06-054181-4)
Softcover, Avon Books

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Book summary:
Some biologists speculate that if we ever make contact with extraterrestrials, those life forms are likely to be--like most life on earth--one-celled or smaller creatures, more comparable to bacteria than little green men. And even though such organisms would not likely be able to harm humans, the possibility exists that first contact might be our last.
That's the scientific supposition that Michael Crichton formulates and follows out to its conclusion in his excellent debut novel, The Andromeda Strain.
A Nobel-Prize-winning bacteriologist, Jeremy Stone, urges the president to approve an extraterrestrial decontamination facility to sterilize returning astronauts, satellites, and spacecraft that might carry an "unknown biologic agent." The government agrees, almost too quickly, to build the top-secret Wildfire Lab in the desert of Nevada. Shortly thereafter, unbeknownst to Stone, the U.S. Army initiates the "Scoop" satellite program, an attempt to actively collect space pathogens for use in biological warfare. When Scoop VII crashes a couple years later in the isolated Arizona town of Piedmont, the Army ends up getting more than it asked for.
The Andromeda Strain follows Stone and rest of the scientific team mobilized to react to the Scoop crash as they scramble to understand and contain a strange and deadly outbreak. Crichton's first book may well be his best; it has an earnestness that is missing from his later, more calculated thrillers. --Paul Hughes [via]
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Apocalipsis
by Stephen King

ISBN 8497599411 (84-9759-941-1)
Softcover, Debolsillo

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Book summary:
Spanish edition [via]
More editions of Apocalipsis:
- Apocalipsis: ISBN 8497599411 (84-9759-941-1)
  Softcover, Debolsillo
The Black Death
by P. Ziegler

ISBN 0061315508 (0-06-131550-8)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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'as exciting and readable an account as you could wish' -- The Guardian
The major study of the origins, progress and economic and social effects of the plague throughout Europe in the 14th century. [via]
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Blindness
by Jose Saramago

ISBN 1860466850 (1-86046-685-0)
Softcover, Harvill Pr

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In an unnamed city in an unnamed country, a man sitting in his car waiting for a traffic light to change is suddenly struck blind. But instead of being plunged into darkness, this man sees everything white, as if he "were caught in a mist or had fallen into a milky sea." A Good Samaritan offers to drive him home (and later steals his car); his wife takes him by taxi to a nearby eye clinic where they are ushered past other patients into the doctor's office. Within a day the man's wife, the taxi driver, the doctor and his patients, and the car thief have all succumbed to blindness. As the epidemic spreads, the government panics and begins quarantining victims in an abandoned mental asylum--guarded by soldiers with orders to shoot anyone who tries to escape. So begins Portuguese author José Saramago's gripping story of humanity under siege, written with a dearth of paragraphs, limited punctuation, and embedded dialogue minus either quotation marks or attribution. At first this may seem challenging, but the style actually contributes to the narrative's building tension, and to the reader's involvement.
In this community of blind people there is still one set of functioning eyes: the doctor's wife has affected blindness in order to accompany her husband to the asylum. As the number of victims grows and the asylum becomes overcrowded, systems begin to break down: toilets back up, food deliveries become sporadic; there is no medical treatment for the sick and no proper way to bury the dead. Inevitably, social conventions begin to crumble as well, with one group of blind inmates taking control of the dwindling food supply and using it to exploit the others. Through it all, the doctor's wife does her best to protect her little band of blind charges, eventually leading them out of the hospital and back into the horribly changed landscape of the city.
Blindness is in many ways a horrific novel, detailing as it does the total breakdown in society that follows upon this most unnatural disaster. Saramago takes his characters to the very edge of humanity and then pushes them over the precipice. His people learn to live in inexpressible filth, they commit acts of both unspeakable violence and amazing generosity that would have been unimaginable to them before the tragedy. The very structure of society itself alters to suit the circumstances as once-civilized, urban dwellers become ragged nomads traveling by touch from building to building in search of food. The devil is in the details, and Saramago has imagined for us in all its devastation a hell where those who went blind in the streets can never find their homes again, where people are reduced to eating chickens raw and packs of dogs roam the excrement-covered sidewalks scavenging from corpses.
And yet in the midst of all this horror Saramago has written passages of unsurpassed beauty. Upon being told she is beautiful by three of her charges, women who have never seen her, "the doctor's wife is reduced to tears because of a personal pronoun, an adverb, a verb, an adjective, mere grammatical categories, mere labels, just like the two women, the others, indefinite pronouns, they too are crying, they embrace the woman of the whole sentence, three graces beneath the falling rain." In this one woman Saramago has created an enduring, fully developed character who serves both as the eyes and ears of the reader and as the conscience of the race. And in Blindness he has written a profound, ultimately transcendent meditation on what it means to be human. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Briar's Book: Library Edition
by Tamora Pierce

ISBN 0590554115 (0-590-55411-5)
Softcover, Point

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FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. Briar, a young mage-in-training, and his teacher Rosethorn must use their magic to fight a deadly plague that is ravaging Summersea. [via]
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The Brief History of the Dead
by Kevin Brockmeier

ISBN 1400095956 (1-4000-9595-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Remember me when Im gone
just took on a whole new meaning.

The City is inhabited by the recently departed, who reside there only as long as they remain in the memories of the living. Among the current residents of this afterlife are Luka Sims, who prints the only newspaper in the City, with news from the other side; Coleman Kinzler, a vagrant who speaks the cautionary words of God; and Marion and Phillip Byrd, who find themselves falling in love again after decades of marriage.

On Earth, Laura Byrd is trapped by extreme weather in an Antarctic research station. Shes alone and unable to contact the outside world: her radio is down and the power is failing. Shes running out of supplies as quickly as shes running out of time.

Kevin Brockmeier interweaves these two stories in a spellbinding tale of human connections across boundaries of all kinds. The Brief History of the Dead is the work of a remarkably gifted writer. [via]
More editions of The Brief History of the Dead:
- The Brief History of the Dead: A Novel: ISBN 0375423699 (0-375-42369-9)
  Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
- The Brief History of the Dead: ISBN 1400095956 (1-4000-9595-6)
  Softcover, Random House Inc
The Cobra Event
by Richard Preston

ISBN 0345409973 (0-345-40997-3)
Softcover, Ballantine Books

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In New York City in the late '90s, a 17-year-old girl heads off to her private school even though she has a cold. By art class her nose is gushing mucus and she's severely disoriented. Within seconds, it seems, she's in convulsions and, most bizarrely, can't stop biting herself. All the reader can do is hope she'll die quickly, but Kate Moran's body still has a few more disgusting turns to undergo, and Richard Preston--a Jacobean master of ceremonies par excellence--takes us through them in bizarre and bloody detail.
Clearly, whatever Kate had was a head cold with a scientific vengeance. Preston's heroine, Alice Austen, a doctor with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, realizes--in the first of several gripping autopsy scenes--that the girl's nervous system had been virtually destroyed. So far, only one other person is known to have died in the same way, but he was a homeless man. Austen must connect the two cases, seemingly linked only by the subway, before the media gets hold of them and drums up a paranoia-fest--and before the virus's creator can kill again.
The Cobra Event is itself a paranoia-fest, a provocative thriller that makes you wonder exactly how much bioterrorism is taking place in the real world. Preston, best known for his terrifying chronicle of the Ebola virus, The Hot Zone, and other impeccably researched nonfictions, is not content to create fast-paced nightmarish scenes. His novel is instead a complex morality tale anchored in uncomfortable fact. Preston is keen to convey the "invisible history" of bioweapons engineering and, equally, to show the unsung heroism of his scientific detectives (along with that of the nurses and technicians who literally sacrifice their lives for medicine). Like their creator, these characters are not without a sense of humor. One calls the manmade virus "the ultimate head cold." Readers will never forget literally dozens of scenes and will never again see the subway, rodents, autopsy knives, and--above all--runny noses in the same light. [via]
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The Coming Plague
by Laurie Garrett

ISBN 0140250913 (0-14-025091-3)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Where's your next disease coming from? From anywhere in the world--from overflowing sewage in Cairo, from a war zone in Rwanda, from an energy-efficient office building in California, from a pig farm in China or North Carolina. "Preparedness demands understanding" writes Pulitzer-winning journalist Laurie Garrett, and in this precursor to Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health she shows true understanding of the patterns lying beneath the new diseases in the headlines (AIDS, Lyme) and the old ones resurgent (tuberculosis, cholera). As the human population explodes, ecologies collapse and simplify, and disease organisms move into the gaps. As globalisation continues, diseases can move from one country to another as fast as an aeroplane can fly.
While the human race battles itself... the advantage moves to the microbes' court. They are our predators and they will be victorious if we, Homo sapiens, do not learn how to live in a rational global village that affords the microbes few opportunities.
Her picture is not entirely bleak: epidemics grow when a disease outbreak is amplified--by contaminated water supplies, by shared needles, by recirculated air, by prostitution--and controlling disease amplifiers is within our power, a matter of money, people and will. --Mary Ellen Curtin [via]
More editions of The Coming Plague:
- The Coming Plague: ISBN 0374126461 (0-374-12646-1)
  Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
- The Coming Plague: ISBN 0140250913 (0-14-025091-3)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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The Demon in the Freezer
by Richard Preston

ISBN 0345466632 (0-345-46663-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books

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Book summary:
On December 9, 1979, smallpox, the most deadly human virus, ceased to exist in nature. After eradication, it was confined to freezers located in just two places on earth: the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and the Maximum Containment Laboratory in Siberia. But these final samples were not destroyed at that time, and now secret stockpiles of smallpox surely exist. For example, since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the subsequent end of its biological weapons program, a sizeable amount of the former Soviet Union's smallpox stockpile remains unaccounted for, leading to fears that the virus has fallen into the hands of nations or terrorist groups willing to use it as a weapon. Scarier yet, some may even be trying to develop a strain that is resistant to vaccines. This disturbing reality is the focus of this fascinating, terrifying, and important book.
A longtime contributor to The New Yorker and author of the bestseller The Hot Zone, Preston is a skillful journalist whose work flows like a science fiction thriller. Based on extensive interviews with smallpox experts, health workers, and members of the U.S. intelligence community, The Demon in the Freezer details the history and behavior of the virus and how it was eventually isolated and eradicated by the heroic individuals of the World Health Organization. Preston also explains why a battle still rages between those who want to destroy all known stocks of the virus and those who want to keep some samples alive until a cure is found. This is a bitterly contentious point between scientists. Some worry that further testing will trigger a biological arms race, while others argue that more research is necessary since there are currently too few available doses of the vaccine to deal with a major outbreak. The anthrax scare of October, 2001, which Preston also writes about in this book, has served to reinforce the present dangers of biological warfare.
As Preston eloquently states in this powerful book, this scourge, once contained, was let loose again due to human weakness: "The virus's last strategy for survival was to bewitch its host and become a source of power. We could eradicate smallpox from nature, but we could not uproot the virus from the human heart." --Shawn Carkonen [via]
More editions of The Demon in the Freezer:
- The Demon in the Freezer: ISBN 0345466632 (0-345-46663-2)
  Softcover, Ballantine Books
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The Demon in the Freezer : A True Story
by Richard Preston

ISBN 0375508562 (0-375-50856-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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Book summary:
On December 9, 1979, smallpox, the most deadly human virus, ceased to exist in nature. After eradication, it was confined to freezers located in just two places on earth: the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and the Maximum Containment Laboratory in Siberia. But these final samples were not destroyed at that time, and now secret stockpiles of smallpox surely exist. For example, since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the subsequent end of its biological weapons program, a sizeable amount of the former Soviet Union's smallpox stockpile remains unaccounted for, leading to fears that the virus has fallen into the hands of nations or terrorist groups willing to use it as a weapon. Scarier yet, some may even be trying to develop a strain that is resistant to vaccines. This disturbing reality is the focus of this fascinating, terrifying, and important book.
A longtime contributor to The New Yorker and author of the bestseller The Hot Zone, Preston is a skillful journalist whose work flows like a science fiction thriller. Based on extensive interviews with smallpox experts, health workers, and members of the U.S. intelligence community, The Demon in the Freezer details the history and behavior of the virus and how it was eventually isolated and eradicated by the heroic individuals of the World Health Organization. Preston also explains why a battle still rages between those who want to destroy all known stocks of the virus and those who want to keep some samples alive until a cure is found. This is a bitterly contentious point between scientists. Some worry that further testing will trigger a biological arms race, while others argue that more research is necessary since there are currently too few available doses of the vaccine to deal with a major outbreak. The anthrax scare of October, 2001, which Preston also writes about in this book, has served to reinforce the present dangers of biological warfare.
As Preston eloquently states in this powerful book, this scourge, once contained, was let loose again due to human weakness: "The virus's last strategy for survival was to bewitch its host and become a source of power. We could eradicate smallpox from nature, but we could not uproot the virus from the human heart." --Shawn Carkonen [via]
More editions of The Demon in the Freezer : A True Story:
- The Demon in the Freezer : A True Story: ISBN 0375508562 (0-375-50856-2)
  Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Doomsday Book
by Connie Willis

ISBN 0553562738 (0-553-56273-8)
Softcover, Bantam Books

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Connie Willis labored five years on this story of a history student in 2048 who is transported to an English village in the 14th century. The student arrives mistakenly on the eve of the onset of the Black Plague. Her dealings with a family of "contemps" in 1348 and with her historian cohorts lead to complications as the book unfolds into a surprisingly dark, deep conclusion. The book, which won Hugo and Nebula Awards, draws upon Willis' understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering and the indomitable will of the human spirit. [via]
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Ensayo Sobre LA Ceguera
by Jose Saramago

ISBN 8495501074 (84-95501-07-4)
Softcover, Santillana USA Pub Co Inc

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A driver waiting at a red light suddenly becomes blind. So does his wife and the doctor who examines them. They are the first cases of an "epidemic" of blindness. A terrifying allegory of the dark times that we are living as we aproach at the new millennium.
Blurb in Spanish:
Una ceguera blanca se expande de manera fulminante. Internados en cuarentena o perdidos por la ciudad, los ciegos deben enfrentarse a lo más primitivo de la especie humana: la voluntad de sobrevivir a cualquier precio. [via]
More editions of Ensayo Sobre LA Ceguera:
- Ensayo Sobre LA Ceguera: ISBN 8495501074 (84-95501-07-4)
  Softcover, Santillana USA Pub Co Inc
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Ensayo Sobre La Ceguera/blindness
by Jose Saramago

ISBN 9681908716 (968-19-0871-6)
Softcover, Santillana USA Pub Co Inc

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A driver waiting at a red light suddenly becomes blind. So does his wife and the doctor who examines them. They are the first cases of an "epidemic" of blindness. A terrifying allegory of the dark times that we are living as we approach the new millennium. [via]
More editions of Ensayo Sobre La Ceguera/blindness:
- Ensayo Sobre La Ceguera/blindness: ISBN 9681908716 (968-19-0871-6)
  Softcover, Santillana USA Pub Co Inc
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Fever 1793
by Laurie Halse Anderson

ISBN 0689848919 (0-689-84891-9)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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On the heels of her acclaimed contemporary teen novel Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson surprises her fans with a riveting and well-researched historical fiction. Fever 1793 is based on an actual epidemic of yellow fever in Philadelphia that wiped out 5,000 people--or 10 percent of the city's population--in three months. At the close of the 18th century, Philadelphia was the bustling capital of the United States, with Washington and Jefferson in residence. During the hot mosquito-infested summer of 1793, the dreaded yellow fever spread like wildfire, killing people overnight. Like specters from the Middle Ages, gravediggers drew carts through the streets crying "Bring out your dead!" The rich fled to the country, abandoning the city to looters, forsaken corpses, and frightened survivors.
In the foreground of this story is 16-year-old Mattie Cook, whose mother and grandfather own a popular coffee house on High Street. Mattie's comfortable and interesting life is shattered by the epidemic, as her mother is felled and the girl and her grandfather must flee for their lives. Later, after much hardship and terror, they return to the deserted town to find their former cook, a freed slave, working with the African Free Society, an actual group who undertook to visit and assist the sick and saved many lives. As first frost arrives and the epidemic ends, Mattie's sufferings have changed her from a willful child to a strong, capable young woman able to manage her family's business on her own. (Ages 12 and older) --Patty Campbell [via]
More editions of Fever 1793:
- Fever 1793: ISBN 0689838581 (0-689-83858-1)
  Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
- Fever 1793: ISBN 0689848919 (0-689-84891-9)
  Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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Flu
by Gina Bari Kolata

ISBN 1417618019 (1-4176-1801-9)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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Feeling tired, achy, and congested? You'll hope not after reading science writer Gina Kolata's engrossing Flu, a fascinating look at the 1918 epidemic that wiped out around 40 million people in less than a year and afflicted more than one of every four Americans. This tragedy, just on the heels of World War I and far more deadly, so traumatized the survivors that few would talk about it afterward. Kolata reports on the scientific investigation of this bizarre outbreak, in particular the attempts to sequence the virus' DNA from tissue samples of victims. She also looks at the social and personal effects of the disease, from improved public health awareness to the loss of productivity. (The disease affected 20- to 40-year-olds disproportionately.)
How could this disease, now almost trivial to healthy young people, have become so virulent? The answer is complex, invoking epidemiology, immunology, and even psychology, but Kolata cuts a swath through medical papers and statistical reports to tell a story of an out-of-control virus exploiting an exhausted world on the brink of transition into modern society. Through letters, interviews, and news reports, she pieces together a cautionary tale that captures the horror of a devastating illness. Research marches onward, but we're still at the mercy of something as simple as the flu. --Rob Lightner [via]
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The Ghost Map
by Steven Johnson

ISBN 1594489254 (1-59448-925-4)
Hardcover, Riverhead Books

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Steven Johnson, bestselling author of Everything Bad is Good for You, is fantastically gifted, and anyone who doubts it need only consider this: in The Ghost Map, Johnson manages to make filth, overpopulation, feces and death the cornerstones of one of the year's snappiest page-turners. On the simplest level, The Ghost Map is the true-life tale of the cholera scourge that slammed London in 1854 and the two passionate and whip-smart men who ferreted out its cause. But it's also a biography, a detective saga, a horror story, a history lesson, a sociological rumination on cities, an unlikely but gripping celebration of the modern sewer system and a vivid portrait of historic London life.
"London's underground market of scavenging had its own system of rank and privilege, and near the top were the night-soil men," Johnson observes. "Like the beloved chimney sweeps of Mary Poppins, the night-soil men worked as independent contractors at the very edge of the legitimate economy, though their labor was significantly more revolting than the foraging of the mud-larks and toshers.
"City landlords hired the men to remove the "night soil" from the overflowing cesspools of their buildings. The collecting of human excrement was a venerable occupation; in medieval times they were called rakers. [But] the work conditions could be deadly: in 1326, an ill-fated laborer by the name of Richard the Raker fell into a cesspool and literally drowned in human shit."
Nice. Clearly much more than just a dry recitation of data--though the depth of Johnson's research is obvious--The Ghost Map is a hair-raiser that cooks from page one. A big reason is Johnson's ability to personify and animate what he terms "the invisible kingdom of microscopic bacteria," transforming cholera into a nefarious three-dimensional villain with a role to play and zest for the part.

His work as biographer also impresses. Johnson gives us two protagonists all but forgotten by history who really should be feted: Dr. John Snow, who 150 years ago in an era of superstition and tenaciously held scientific notions, managed to work out the simple equation that excrement + drinking water = death. We also meet Reverend Henry Whitehead who similarly helped to crack the cholera riddle by flat-footing it through Soho, interviewing residents and survivors and eventually coming to believe that Snow was onto something with his water-borne disease theory. (The prevailing wisdom of the day held that disease was airborne and linked to smell).

It is no exaggeration to say that Snow's efforts changed the world. Ditto engineer Joseph Bazalgette, whose sprawling, visionary English sewer system Johnson likens in stature and scope to the Eiffel Tower and Brooklyn Bridge. The Ghost Map is a great, great book, stuffed with cool factoids and told by a writer so conversant in his topic that it plays like an exquisite yarn shared over friendly beers. --Kim Hughes [via]
More editions of The Ghost Map:
- The Ghost Map: ISBN 1594489254 (1-59448-925-4)
  Hardcover, Riverhead Books
The Great Influenza: The Story Of The Deadliest Pandemic In History
by John Barry

ISBN 0143036491 (0-14-303649-1)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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- The Great Influenza: The Story Of The Deadliest Pandemic In History: ISBN 0143036491 (0-14-303649-1)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History
by John M. Barry

ISBN 0143034480 (0-14-303448-0)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
No disease the world has ever known even remotely resembles the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Presumed to have begun when sick farm animals infected soldiers in Kansas, spreading and mutating into a lethal strain as troops carried it to Europe, it exploded across the world with unequaled ferocity and speed. It killed more people in twenty weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty years; it killed more people in a year than the plagues of the Middle Ages killed in a century. Victims bled from the ears and nose, turned blue from lack of oxygen, suffered aches that felt like bones being broken, and died. In the United States, where bodies were stacked without coffins on trucks, nearly seven times as many people died of influenza as in the First World War.
In his powerful new book, award-winning historian John M. Barry unfolds a tale that is magisterial in its breadth and in the depth of its research, and spellbinding as he weaves multiple narrative strands together. In this first great collision between science and epidemic disease, even as society approached collapse, a handful of heroic researchers stepped forward, risking their lives to confront this strange disease. Titans like William Welch at the newly formed Johns Hopkins Medical School and colleagues at Rockefeller University and others from around the country revolutionized American science and public health, and their work in this crisis led to crucial discoveries that we are still using and learning from today.
The Washington Posts Jonathan Yardley said Barrys last book can "change the way we think." The Great Influenza may also change the way we see the world. [via]
More editions of The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History:
- The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History: ISBN 0670894737 (0-670-89473-7)
  Hardcover, Viking Pr
- The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History: ISBN 0143034480 (0-14-303448-0)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Have Mercy on Us All
by David Bellos, Fred Vargas

ISBN 1843431092 (1-84343-109-2)
Softcover, Harvill

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Book summary:
Inspirational, in depth voyage [via]
More editions of Have Mercy on Us All:
- Have Mercy on Us All: ISBN 1843431548 (1-84343-154-8)
  Hardcover, Harvill
- Have Mercy on Us All: ISBN 1843431092 (1-84343-109-2)
  Softcover, Harvill
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History of the Peloponnesian War
by Thucydides

ISBN 1593080913 (1-59308-091-3)
Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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Book summary:
Thucydides claimed that his account of the devastating war between the Athenians and the Spartans was a "possession for all time". An Athenian general, he was exiled for a military failure and drew for his writing on his personal experience and information from an extensive network of contacts on both sides to the epic conflict. His work is shaped by his judgements about the exercise of power in a democracy which ruled an empire and by his analysis of the impact of war on the social fabric. Thucydides's technique draws on the culture of his time, including sophist rhetoric, the drama of Greek tragedy and the diagnostic methods of the Hippocratic medical writers. The issues Thucydides addressed are as germane today as they were in the 5th-century BC. [via]
More editions of History of the Peloponnesian War:
- History of the Peloponnesian War: ISBN 1853264814 (1-85326-481-4)
  Softcover, Lb May & Assoc Inc
- History of the Peloponnesian War: ISBN 1593080913 (1-59308-091-3)
  Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc
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The Hot Zone
by Richard Preston

ISBN 1568952058 (1-56895-205-8)
Hardcover, Wheeler Pub Inc

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Book summary:
A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic "hot" virus. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their "crashes" into the human race. Shocking, frightening, and impossible to ignore, The Hot Zone proves that truth really is scarier than fiction. [via]
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LA Peste
by Albert Camus

ISBN 2070360423 (2-07-036042-3)
Softcover, Gallimard

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La Peste est un roman dAlbert Camus publié en 1947 qui permit en partie à son auteur de remporter le prix Nobel en 1957. Il a pour théâtre Oran durant la période de lAlgérie française. Lhistoire se déroule dans les années 1940. Le roman raconte sous forme de chronique la vie quotidienne des habitants de la ville pendant une épidémie de peste qui frappe la ville et la coupe du monde extérieur. [via]
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The Last Days: A Novel
by Scott Westerfeld

ISBN 159514062X (1-59514-062-X)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
Strange things are happening: old friends disappearing, angels (or devils) clambering on the fire escapes of New York City. But for Pearl, Moz, and Zahler, all that matters is the band. As the city reels under a mysterious epidemic, the three combine their talents with a vampire lead singer and a drummer whose fractured mind can glimpse the coming darkness. Will their music stave off the end? Or summon it?
Set against the gritty apocalypse that began in Peeps, The Last Days is about five teenagers who find themselves creating the soundtrack for the end of the world.

[via]
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- The Last Days: A Novel: ISBN 159514062X (1-59514-062-X)
  Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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Moreta
by Anne McCaffrey

ISBN 034529873X (0-345-29873-X)
Softcover, Ballantine Books

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Some fourteen hundred turns after men first came to Pern rode Moreta, on her great golden dragon, Orlith. It was towards the end of the Pass of the Red Star -- a time when every living creature on Pern was threatened by Threadfall -- when the courage and daring of dragons and their riders was all that kept the planet from extinction. And then, at the height of the battle against Thread, came a new and terrible evil. Moreta, in one last superhuman endeavour, was to save her people, and become the greatest legend of dragonlore until the end of time. [via]
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Moreta : Dragonlady of Pern
by Anne McCaffrey

ISBN 034541957X (0-345-41957-X)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group

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- Moreta : Dragonlady of Pern: ISBN 034541957X (0-345-41957-X)
  Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Nerilka's Story
by Anne McCaffrey

ISBN 0345339495 (0-345-33949-5)
Softcover, Ballantine Books

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Book summary:
Ashamed of her father's refusal to help the others of Fort Hold, Nerilka helps Lord Alessan prepare a serum to combat a dreaded plague. [via]
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On Blindness
by Jose Saramago

ISBN 1860462987 (1-86046-298-7)
Softcover, Harvill Pr

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Book summary:
In an unnamed city in an unnamed country, a man sitting in his car waiting for a traffic light to change is suddenly struck blind. But instead of being plunged into darkness, this man sees everything white, as if he "were caught in a mist or had fallen into a milky sea." A Good Samaritan offers to drive him home (and later steals his car); his wife takes him by taxi to a nearby eye clinic where they are ushered past other patients into the doctor's office. Within a day the man's wife, the taxi driver, the doctor and his patients, and the car thief have all succumbed to blindness. As the epidemic spreads, the government panics and begins quarantining victims in an abandoned mental asylum--guarded by soldiers with orders to shoot anyone who tries to escape. So begins Portuguese author José Saramago's gripping story of humanity under siege, written with a dearth of paragraphs, limited punctuation, and embedded dialogue minus either quotation marks or attribution. At first this may seem challenging, but the style actually contributes to the narrative's building tension, and to the reader's involvement.
In this community of blind people there is still one set of functioning eyes: the doctor's wife has affected blindness in order to accompany her husband to the asylum. As the number of victims grows and the asylum becomes overcrowded, systems begin to break down: toilets back up, food deliveries become sporadic; there is no medical treatment for the sick and no proper way to bury the dead. Inevitably, social conventions begin to crumble as well, with one group of blind inmates taking control of the dwindling food supply and using it to exploit the others. Through it all, the doctor's wife does her best to protect her little band of blind charges, eventually leading them out of the hospital and back into the horribly changed landscape of the city.
Blindness is in many ways a horrific novel, detailing as it does the total breakdown in society that follows upon this most unnatural disaster. Saramago takes his characters to the very edge of humanity and then pushes them over the precipice. His people learn to live in inexpressible filth, they commit acts of both unspeakable violence and amazing generosity that would have been unimaginable to them before the tragedy. The very structure of society itself alters to suit the circumstances as once-civilized, urban dwellers become ragged nomads traveling by touch from building to building in search of food. The devil is in the details, and Saramago has imagined for us in all its devastation a hell where those who went blind in the streets can never find their homes again, where people are reduced to eating chickens raw and packs of dogs roam the excrement-covered sidewalks scavenging from corpses.
And yet in the midst of all this horror Saramago has written passages of unsurpassed beauty. Upon being told she is beautiful by three of her charges, women who have never seen her, "the doctor's wife is reduced to tears because of a personal pronoun, an adverb, a verb, an adjective, mere grammatical categories, mere labels, just like the two women, the others, indefinite pronouns, they too are crying, they embrace the woman of the whole sentence, three graces beneath the falling rain." In this one woman Saramago has created an enduring, fully developed character who serves both as the eyes and ears of the reader and as the conscience of the race. And in Blindness he has written a profound, ultimately transcendent meditation on what it means to be human. --Alix Wilber [via]
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- On Blindness: ISBN 1860462987 (1-86046-298-7)
  Softcover, Harvill Pr
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Phenomenological Psychology
by E. Husserl

ISBN 902471978X (90-247-1978-X)
Softcover, Kluwer Academic Pub

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- Phenomenological Psychology: ISBN 902471978X (90-247-1978-X)
  Softcover, Kluwer Academic Pub
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The Plague
by Albert Camus, Stuart Gilbert

ISBN 0075536498 (0-07-553649-8)
Softcover, McGraw-Hill College

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Book summary:
The Nobel prize-winning Albert Camus, who died in 1960, could not have known how grimly current his existentialist novel of epidemic and death would remain. Set in Algeria, in northern Africa, The Plague is a powerful study of human life and its meaning in the face of a deadly virus that sweeps dispassionately through the city, taking a vast percentage of the population with it. [via]
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Plagues and Peoples
by William H. McNeill

ISBN 0385121229 (0-385-12122-9)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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This study describes the dramatic impact of infectious diseases on the rise and fall of civilizations. Plague demoralized the Athenian Army during war, and ravaged the Roman Empire. In the 16th century smallpox was the decisive agent that allowed Cortez with only 600 men to conquer the Aztec Empire, whose subjects numbered millions. As recently as 1918-19, an epidemic of influenza claimed 21 million victims and seemed to threaten civilization itself. Diseases such as syphilis, cholera, smallpox and malaria have been devastating to humanity for centuries. This book, through an impressive accumulation of evidence, demonstrates the central role of pestilence in human affairs and the extent to which it has changed the course of history. [via]
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Rats, Lice and History: Being a Study in Biography, Which, After Twelve Preliminary Chapters Indispensable for the Preparation of the Lay Reader, De
by Hans Zinsser

ISBN 0316988960 (0-316-98896-0)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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Book summary:
When Rats, Lice and History appeared in 1935, Hans Zinsser was a highly regarded Harvard biologist who had never written about historical events. Although he had published under a pseudonym, virtually all of his previous writings had dealt with infections and immunity and had appeared either in medical and scientific journals or in book format. Today he is best remembered as the author of Rats, Lice, and History, which gone through multiple editions and remains a masterpiece of science writing for a general readership.

To Zinsser, scientific research was high adventure and the investigation of infectious disease, a field of battle. Yet at the same time he maintained a love of literature and philosophy. His goal in Rats, Lice and History was to bring science, philosophy, and literature together to establish the importance of disease, and especially epidemic infectious disease, as a major force in human affairs. Zinsser cast his work as the "biography" of a disease. In his view, infectious disease simply represented an attempt of a living organism to survive. From a human perspective, an invading pathogen was abnormal; from the perspective of the pathogen it was perfectly normal.

This book is devoted to a discussion of the biology of typhus and history of typhus fever in human affairs. Zinsser begins by pointing out that the louse was the constant companion of human beings. Under certain conditionsto wash or to change clothinglice proliferated. The typhus pathogen was transmitted by rat fleas to human beings, who then transmitted it to other humans and in some strains from human to human.

Rats, Lice and History is a tour de force. It combines Zinsser's expertise in biology with his broad knowledge of the humanities
[via]
More editions of Rats, Lice and History: Being a Study in Biography, Which, After Twelve Preliminary Chapters Indispensable for the Preparation of the Lay Reader, De:
- Rats, Lice, & History: Being a Study in Biography, Which, after Twelve Preliminary Chapters Indispensable for the Preparation of the Lay Reader, Deals with the Life History of Typhus Fever ..: ISBN 0333395670 (0-333-39567-0)
  Hardcover, Papermac
- Rats, Lice and History: Being a Study in Biography, Which, After Twelve Preliminary Chapters Indispensable for the Preparation of the Lay Reader, De: ISBN 0316988960 (0-316-98896-0)
  Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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Rats, Lice and History: A Chronicle of Disease, Plagues, and Pestilence
by Hans Zinsser

ISBN 1884822479 (1-884822-47-9)
Hardcover, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Incorporated

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The classic chronicle of the impact disease and plagues have had on history and society over the past half-millennium. Intriguingly fascinating and entertaining reading for anyone who is interested in how society copes with catastrophe and pain. Relevant today in face of the worldwide medical calamity of AIDS. Continuously in print since its first publication in 1934, with over 75 printings. [via]
More editions of Rats, Lice and History: A Chronicle of Disease, Plagues, and Pestilence:
- Rats, Lice and History: A Chronicle of Disease, Plagues, and Pestilence: ISBN 1884822479 (1-884822-47-9)
  Hardcover, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Incorporated
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The Stand
by Stephen King

ISBN 0385121687 (0-385-12168-7)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing

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In 1978, science fiction writer Spider Robinson wrote a scathing review of The Stand in which he exhorted his readers to grab strangers in bookstores and beg them not to buy it.
The Stand is like that. You either love it or hate it, but you can't ignore it. Stephen King's most popular book, according to polls of his fans, is an end-of-the-world scenario: a rapidly mutating flu virus is accidentally released from a U.S. military facility and wipes out 99 and 44/100 percent of the world's population, thus setting the stage for an apocalyptic confrontation between Good and Evil.
"I love to burn things up," King says. "It's the werewolf in me, I guess.... The Stand was particularly fulfilling, because there I got a chance to scrub the whole human race, and man, it was fun! ... Much of the compulsive, driven feeling I had while I worked on The Stand came from the vicarious thrill of imagining an entire entrenched social order destroyed in one stroke."
There is much to admire in The Stand: the vivid thumbnail sketches with which King populates a whole landscape with dozens of believable characters; the deep sense of nostalgia for things left behind; the way it subverts our sense of reality by showing us a world we find familiar, then flipping it over to reveal the darkness underneath. Anyone who wants to know, or claims to know, the heart of the American experience needs to read this book. --Fiona Webster [via]
More editions of The Stand:
- The Stand: ISBN 0385121687 (0-385-12168-7)
  Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
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The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition
by Stephen King

ISBN 1568495714 (1-56849-571-4)
Hardcover, Buccaneer Books

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Book summary:
In 1978, science fiction writer Spider Robinson wrote a scathing review of The Stand in which he exhorted his readers to grab strangers in bookstores and beg them not to buy it.
The Stand is like that. You either love it or hate it, but you can't ignore it. Stephen King's most popular book, according to polls of his fans, is an end-of-the-world scenario: a rapidly mutating flu virus is accidentally released from a U.S. military facility and wipes out 99 and 44/100 percent of the world's population, thus setting the stage for an apocalyptic confrontation between Good and Evil.
"I love to burn things up," King says. "It's the werewolf in me, I guess.... The Stand was particularly fulfilling, because there I got a chance to scrub the whole human race, and man, it was fun! ... Much of the compulsive, driven feeling I had while I worked on The Stand came from the vicarious thrill of imagining an entire entrenched social order destroyed in one stroke."
There is much to admire in The Stand: the vivid thumbnail sketches with which King populates a whole landscape with dozens of believable characters; the deep sense of nostalgia for things left behind; the way it subverts our sense of reality by showing us a world we find familiar, then flipping it over to reveal the darkness underneath. Anyone who wants to know, or claims to know, the heart of the American experience needs to read this book. --Fiona Webster [via]
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The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell

ISBN 0316346624 (0-316-34662-4)
Softcover, Back Bay Books

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Book summary:
"The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, Gladwell's The Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject.
For example, Paul Revere was able to galvanize the forces of resistance so effectively in part because he was what Gladwell calls a "Connector": he knew just about everybody, particularly the revolutionary leaders in each of the towns that he rode through. But Revere "wasn't just the man with the biggest Rolodex in colonial Boston," he was also a "Maven" who gathered extensive information about the British. He knew what was going on and he knew exactly whom to tell. The phenomenon continues to this day--think of how often you've received information in an e-mail message that had been forwarded at least half a dozen times before reaching you.
Gladwell develops these and other concepts (such as the "stickiness" of ideas or the effect of population size on information dispersal) through simple, clear explanations and entertainingly illustrative anecdotes, such as comparing the pedagogical methods of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, or explaining why it would be even easier to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the actor Rod Steiger. Although some readers may find the transitional passages between chapters hold their hands a little too tightly, and Gladwell's closing invocation of the possibilities of social engineering sketchy, even chilling, The Tipping Point is one of the most effective books on science for a general audience in ages. It seems inevitable that "tipping point," like "future shock" or "chaos theory," will soon become one of those ideas that everybody knows--or at least knows by name. --Ron Hogan [via]
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The White Plague
by Frank Herbert

ISBN 0441885691 (0-441-88569-1)
Softcover, Putnam Berkley

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Book summary:

What if women were an endangered species?

It begins in Ireland, but soon spreads throughout the entire world: a virulent new disease expressly designed to target only women. As fully half of the human race dies off at a frightening pace and life on Earth faces extinction, panicked people and governments struggle to cope with the global crisis. Infected areas are quarantined or burned to the ground. The few surviving women are locked away in hidden reserves, while frantic doctors and scientists race to find a cure. Anarchy and violence consume the planet.

The plague is the work of a solitary individual who calls himself the Madman. As government security forces feverishly hunt for the renegade scientist, he wanders incognito through a world that will never be the same. Society, religion, and morality are all irrevocably transformed by the White Plague.
[via]
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Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague
by Geraldine Brooks

ISBN 0142001430 (0-14-200143-0)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
Geraldine Brooks's Year of Wonders describes the 17th-century plague that is carried from London to a small Derbyshire village by an itinerant tailor. As villagers begin, one by one, to die, the rest face a choice: do they flee their village in hope of outrunning the plague or do they stay? The lord of the manor and his family pack up and leave. The rector, Michael Mompellion, argues forcefully that the villagers should stay put, isolate themselves from neighboring towns and villages, and prevent the contagion from spreading. His oratory wins the day and the village turns in on itself. Cocooned from the outside world and ravaged by the disease, its inhabitants struggle to retain their humanity in the face of the disaster. The narrator, the young widow Anna Frith, is one of the few who succeeds. With Mompellion and his wife, Elinor, she tends to the dying and battles to prevent her fellow villagers from descending into drink, violence, and superstition. All is complicated by the intense, inexpressible feelings she develops for both the rector and his wife. Year of Wonders sometimes seems anachronistic as historical fiction; Anna and Mompellion occasionally appear to be modern sensibilities unaccountably transferred to 17th-century Derbyshire. However, there is no mistaking the power of Brooks's imagination or the skill with which she constructs her story of ordinary people struggling to cope with extraordinary circumstances. --Nick Rennison, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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Spanish

Armas, germenes y acero/ Guns, Germs and Steel
by Jared Diamond

ISBN 848306667X (84-8306-667-X)
Hardcover, Debate Editorial

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- Armas, germenes y acero/ Guns, Germs and Steel: ISBN 848306667X (84-8306-667-X)
  Hardcover, Debate Editorial
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Ensayo Sobre LA Ceguera
by Jose Saramago

ISBN 8420428655 (84-204-2865-5)
Softcover, Santillana USA Pub Co Inc

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Book summary:
A driver waiting at a red light suddenly becomes blind. So does his wife and the doctor who examines them. They are the first cases of an "epidemic" of blindness. A terrifying allegory of the dark times that we are living as we approach the new millennium. [via]
More editions of Ensayo Sobre LA Ceguera:
- Ensayo Sobre LA Ceguera: ISBN 8420428655 (84-204-2865-5)
  Softcover, Santillana USA Pub Co Inc
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La Voz de los Muertos
by Orson Scott Card, Rafael Marin Trechera

ISBN 8466618082 (84-666-1808-2)
Softcover, Ediciones B

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Book summary:
In the aftermath of the terrible war with the Buggers, Ender Wiggin disappeared and a powerful voice arose in his placethe Speaker for the Dead. Years later, a second alien race is discovered whose first contacts with humans have caused incomprehensible deaths. It is only the Speaker for the Dead who has the courage to confront the truth about this new enemy.
[via]
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- La Voz de los Muertos: ISBN 8466618082 (84-666-1808-2)
  Softcover, Ediciones B

Portuguese

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Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira: Romance
by Jose Saramago

ISBN 9722110217 (972-21-1021-7)
Hardcover, Caminho

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Book summary:
Um homem fica cego, inexplicavelmente, quando se encontra no seu carro no meio do trânsito. A cegueira alastra como «um rastilho de pólvora». Uma cegueira colectiva. Romance contundente. Saramago a ver mais longe. Personagens sem nome. Um mundo com as contradições da espécie humana. Não se situa em nenhum tempo específico. É um tempo que pode ser ontem, hoje ou amanhã. As ideias a virem ao de cima, sempre na escrita de Saramago. A alegoria. O poder da palavra a abrir os olhos, face ao risco de uma situação terminal generalizada. A arte da escrita ao serviço da preocupação cívica.» (Diário de Notícias, 9 de Outubro de 1998) [via]
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- Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira: Romance: ISBN 9722110217 (972-21-1021-7)
  Hardcover, Caminho

French

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Pars Vite Et Reviens Tard
by Fred Vargas

ISBN 2878581520 (2-87858-152-0)
Hardcover, V. Hamy

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Book summary:
348pages. in8. Broché. [via]
More editions of Pars Vite Et Reviens Tard:
- Pars Vite Et Reviens Tard: ISBN 2878581520 (2-87858-152-0)
  Hardcover, V. Hamy

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