"Intellectually charged, deeply personal, and exhaustively researched."
—The Lancet
A History of the World in Six Plagues
How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19
Description
An “incredible, humane, insightful” (Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize winner) account of humankind’s battles with epidemic disease, and their outsized role in deepening inequality along racial, ethnic, class, and gender lines—in the vein of Medical Apartheid and Killing the Black Body.
With clear-eyed research and lush prose, A History of the World in Six Plagues is “a breathtaking journey through the intertwined histories of contagions and systemic inequities that have shaped our history” (Uché Blackstock, New York Times bestselling author).
Princeton-trained historian Edna Bonhomme’s examination of humanity’s disastrous treatment of pandemic disease takes us across place and time from Port-au-Prince to Tanzania, and from plantation-era America to our modern COVID-19-scarred world to unravel shocking truths about the patterns of discrimination in the face of disease. Also a rising call to action, this “tour de force…will change the way people think about public health and histories of medicine” (Dr. Tiffany N. Florvil, author of Mobilizing Black Germany).
Reviews
"A breathtaking journey [...] Bonhomme not only sheds light on past injustices but challenges us to confront our history and envision a more compassionate future."
—Uché Blackstock, New York Times bestselling author of Legacy
"If everyone read Edna Bonhomme’s incredible, humane, insightful book—and I hope they do—we might stand a chance of actually breaking the cycle of neglect and panic."
—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the New York Times bestsellers I Contain Multitudes and An Immense World
"Edna Bonhomme narrates centuries of the human-microbial dance, laying out how our destinies, liberties, and values are determined by how humans negotiate life on earth with our smallest living neighbors. Brilliant, tender and illuminating."
—Steven W. Thrasher, PhD, author of the award-winning book The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide