A History of the World in Six Plagues
Hardback
A deeply reported, insightful, and literary account of humankind's battles with epidemic disease and their outsized role in deepening inequality along racial, ethnic, class and gender lines.
Epidemic diseases enter the world by chance, but they become catastrophic by human design.With clear-eyed research and lush prose, A History of the World in Six Plagues shows that throughout history, outbreaks of disease have been exacerbated by and gone on to further expand the racial, economic and sociopolitical divides we allow to fester in times of good health.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. Based on in-depth research and cultural analysis, Bonhomme explores Cholera, HIV/AIDS, the Spanish Flu, Sleeping Sickness, Ebola, and COVID-19 amidst the backdrop of unequal public policy. But much more than a remarkable history, A History of the World in Six Plagues is also a rising call for change.Buy now!
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- ISBN: 9780349704364
- Author: Edna Bonhomme
- Pub date: 10.06.25
- RRP: $70.00
- Format: Hardback
Author
Edna Bonhomme
Edna Bonhomme is a historian of science, culture writer and book critic and is a contributing editor for Frieze Magazine. She is coeditor of the book After Sex and her essays have appeared in Esquire, Guardian, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, The Nation and elsewhere. She earned a PhD in history of science from Princeton University. Edna previously held fellowships at the Max Planck Institute, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the Camargo Foundation, and Baldwin for the Arts. She has received awards from the Robert Silvers Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation. She lives in Berlin, Germany.
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