Sometime: the Plague World

Sometime: the Plague World
Author: Meredith Mason Brown
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Total Pages: 135
Release: 2015-09-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1480821632

Dan Floyd, a retired and widowed lawyer, is doing his best to fill his timeattending church, keeping in touch with his two adult sons, and reading up on epidemics. When he comes down with what seems like garden-variety flu, he amuses himself by studying plagues, both modern-day varieties and the biblical kind. Dan and his sons, one of whom is a doctor, share information and speculate about epidemics. Meanwhile, in the community around him, he begins to hear of people dying from complications brought on by the flumany of whom attend his church. Dan soon finds himself investigating members of the Starkherz family, three generations of doctors; it seems the Starkherzes were working with the H1N1 influenza virusthe source of the flu epidemic of 19181919in an attempt to neutralize it. Could their work serve as the source for a twenty-first-century flu pandemic? In this novel, a retired lawyer works with his sons to discover the source of a deadly influenza epidemic that threatens their lives and the lives of everyone around them.

Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World

Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World
Author: Nükhet Varlik
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2015-07-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107013380

This is the first systematic scholarly study of the Ottoman experience of plague during the Black Death pandemic and the centuries that followed. Using a wealth of archival and narrative sources, including medical treatises, hagiographies, and travelers' accounts, as well as recent scientific research, Nükhet Varlik demonstrates how plague interacted with the environmental, social, and political structures of the Ottoman Empire from the late medieval through the early modern era. The book argues that the empire's growth transformed the epidemiological patterns of plague by bringing diverse ecological zones into interaction and by intensifying the mobilities of exchange among both human and non-human agents. Varlik maintains that persistent plagues elicited new forms of cultural imagination and expression, as well as a new body of knowledge about the disease. In turn, this new consciousness sharpened the Ottoman administrative response to the plague, while contributing to the makings of an early modern state.

Plagues in World History

Plagues in World History
Author: John Aberth
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2011-01-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442207965

Plagues in World History provides a concise, comparative world history of catastrophic infectious diseases, including plague, smallpox, tuberculosis, cholera, influenza, and AIDS. Geographically, these diseases have spread across the entire globe; temporally, they stretch from the sixth century to the present. John Aberth considers not only the varied impact that disease has had upon human history but also the many ways in which people have been able to influence diseases simply through their cultural attitudes toward them. The author argues that the ability of humans to alter disease, even without the modern wonders of antibiotic drugs and other medical treatments, is an even more crucial lesson to learn now that AIDS, swine flu, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, and other seemingly incurable illnesses have raged worldwide. Aberth's comparative analysis of how different societies have responded in the past to disease illuminates what cultural approaches have been and may continue to be most effective in combating the plagues of today.

The Plague

The Plague
Author: Albert Camus
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 312
Release: 1991-05-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0679720219

“Its relevance lashes you across the face.” —Stephen Metcalf, The Los Angeles Times • “A redemptive book, one that wills the reader to believe, even in a time of despair.” —Roger Lowenstein, The Washington Post A haunting tale of human resilience and hope in the face of unrelieved horror, Albert Camus' iconic novel about an epidemic ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature. The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr. Rieux, resist the terror. An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, The Plague is in part an allegory of France's suffering under the Nazi occupation, and a timeless story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence.

Return of the Black Death

Return of the Black Death
Author: Susan Scott
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2007-12-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0470338997

If the twenty-first century seems an unlikely stage for the return of a 14th-century killer, the authors of Return of the Black Death argue that the plague, which vanquished half of Europe, has only lain dormant, waiting to emerge again—perhaps, in another form. At the heart of their chilling scenario is their contention that the plague was spread by direct human contact (not from rat fleas) and was, in fact, a virus perhaps similar to AIDS and Ebola. Noting the periodic occurrence of plagues throughout history, the authors predict its inevitable re-emergence sometime in the future, transformed by mass mobility and bioterrorism into an even more devastating killer.

In the Wake of the Plague

In the Wake of the Plague
Author: Norman F. Cantor
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2015-03-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1476797749

The Black Death was the fourteenth century's equivalent of a nuclear war. It wiped out one-third of Europe's population, taking millions of lives. The author draws together the most recent scientific discoveries and historical research to pierce the mist and tell the story of the Black Death as a gripping, intimate narrative.

Justinian's Flea

Justinian's Flea
Author: William Rosen
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2007-05-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1101202424

From the acclaimed author of Miracle Cure and The Third Horseman, the epic story of the collision between one of nature's smallest organisms and history's mightiest empire During the golden age of the Roman Empire, Emperor Justinian reigned over a territory that stretched from Italy to North Africa. It was the zenith of his achievements and the last of them. In 542 AD, the bubonic plague struck. In weeks, the glorious classical world of Justinian had been plunged into the medieval and modern Europe was born. At its height, five thousand people died every day in Constantinople. Cities were completely depopulated. It was the first pandemic the world had ever known and it left its indelible mark: when the plague finally ended, more than 25 million people were dead. Weaving together history, microbiology, ecology, jurisprudence, theology, and epidemiology, Justinian's Flea is a unique and sweeping account of the little known event that changed the course of a continent.

Natural Disasters in the Ottoman Empire

Natural Disasters in the Ottoman Empire
Author: Yaron Ayalon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107072972

Yaron Ayalon explores the Ottoman Empire's history of natural disasters and its responses on a state, communal, and individual level.

Plagues upon the Earth

Plagues upon the Earth
Author: Kyle Harper
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 704
Release: 2021-10-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691224722

A sweeping germ’s-eye view of history from human origins to global pandemics Plagues upon the Earth is a monumental history of humans and their germs. Weaving together a grand narrative of global history with insights from cutting-edge genetics, Kyle Harper explains why humanity’s uniquely dangerous disease pool is rooted deep in our evolutionary past, and why its growth is accelerated by technological progress. He shows that the story of disease is entangled with the history of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism, and reveals the enduring effects of historical plagues in patterns of wealth, health, power, and inequality. He also tells the story of humanity’s escape from infectious disease—a triumph that makes life as we know it possible, yet destabilizes the environment and fosters new diseases. Panoramic in scope, Plagues upon the Earth traces the role of disease in the transition to farming, the spread of cities, the advance of transportation, and the stupendous increase in human population. Harper offers a new interpretation of humanity’s path to control over infectious disease—one where rising evolutionary threats constantly push back against human progress, and where the devastating effects of modernization contribute to the great divergence between societies. The book reminds us that human health is globally interdependent—and inseparable from the well-being of the planet itself. Putting the COVID-19 pandemic in perspective, Plagues upon the Earth tells the story of how we got here as a species, and it may help us decide where we want to go.

Plague Ports

Plague Ports
Author: Myron Echenberg
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2010-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0814722334

Reveals the global effects of the bubonic plague, and what we can learn from this earlier pandemic A century ago, the third bubonic plague swept the globe, taking more than 15 million lives. Plague Ports tells the story of ten cities on five continents that were ravaged by the epidemic in its initial years: Hong Kong and Bombay, the Asian emporiums of the British Empire where the epidemic first surfaced; Sydney, Honolulu and San Francisco, three “pearls” of the Pacific; Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro in South America; Alexandria and Cape Town in Africa; and Oporto in Europe. Myron Echenberg examines plague's impact in each of these cities, on the politicians, the medical and public health authorities, and especially on the citizenry, many of whom were recent migrants crammed into grim living spaces. He looks at how different cultures sought to cope with the challenge of deadly epidemic disease, and explains the political, racial, and medical ineptitudes and ignorance that allowed the plague to flourish. The forces of globalization and industrialization, Echenberg argues, had so increased the transmission of microorganisms that infectious disease pandemics were likely, if not inevitable. This fascinating, expansive history, enlivened by harrowing photographs and maps of each city, sheds light on urbanism and modernity at the turn of the century, as well as on glaring public health inequalities. With the recent outbreak of COVID-19, and ongoing fears of bioterrorism, Plague Ports offers a necessary and timely historical lesson.