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The Black Death

Philip Ziegler · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

Barbara W. Tuchman · 704 pages

Amazon.com Review In this sweeping historical narrative, Barbara Tuchman writes of the cataclysmic 14th century, when the energies of medieval Europe were devoted to fighting internecine wars and warding off the plague. Some medieval thinkers viewed these disasters as divine punishment for mortal wrongs; others, more practically, viewed them as opportunities to accumulate wealth and power. One

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The American Plague

Molly Caldwell Crosby · 320 pages

In this account, a journalist traces the course of yellow fever, stopping in 1878 Memphis to "vividly [evoke] the Faulkner-meets-'Dawn of the Dead' horrors,"*-and moving on to today's strain of the killer virus.Over the course of history, yellow fever has paralyzed governments, halted commerce, quarantined cities, moved the U.S. capital, and altered the outcome of wars. During a single summer in M

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The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

John M. Barry · 546 pages

At the height of WWI, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collisio

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Plagues and Peoples

William Hardy McNeill · 365 pages

Covers the historical impact of bubonic plague (including the Black Death), cholera, malaria, smallpox, and other diseases.

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A Time to Dance, a Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518

John Waller · 267 pages

The true story of a wild dancing epidemic that brought death and fear to a 16th-century city, and the terrifying supernatural beliefs from which it arose.

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Decamerone

Giovanni Boccaccio · 574 pages

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How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS

David France · 640 pages

"From the creator of and inspired by the seminal documentary of the same name--an Oscar nominee--the definitive history of the successful battle to halt the AIDS epidemic, and the powerful, heroic stories of the gay activists who refused to die without a fight. Intimately reported, this is the story of the men and women who, watching their friends and lovers fall, ignored by public officials, reli

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Pox: An American History

Michael Willrich · 427 pages

Chronicles how America's Progressive Era war on smallpox sparked one of the twentieth century's leading civil liberties battles, describing the views and tactics of anti-vaccine advocates who feared an increasingly large government.

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Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus

Bill Wasik, Monica Murphy · 288 pages

Charts the history, science, and cultural mythology of rabies, documenting how before its vaccine the disease caused fatal brain infections and sparked the creations of monsters, including werewolves, vampires and zombies.

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The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus

Richard Preston · 384 pages

This interesting books talks about the author doing an investigation about several viruses in africa, including ebola. He explains the different strains and tells us their stories.

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Medical Detective

Sandra Hempel · 304 pages

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And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

Randy Shilts · 651 pages

The blueprint of 20th century investigative journalism. Tracing the course of HIV/AIDS through society; from its earliest as then unknown incarnation, to the height of this 1980s hysteria – the death of Rock Hudson: Shilts's book should be in every High School's final academic examinations coursework reading list, as a compulsory item. An unregrettable read.

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Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them

Jennifer Wright · 320 pages

"A humorous book about history's worst plagues from the Antonine Plague, to leprosy, to polio and the heroes who fought them In 1518, in a small town in France, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn't stop. She danced herself to her death six days later, and soon thirty-four more villagers joined her. Then more. In a month more than 400 people had died from the mysterious dancing plague. In late-nin

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Terrible Typhoid Mary: A True Story of the Deadliest Cook in America

Susan Campbell Bartoletti · 236 pages

With archival photographs and text among other primary sources, provides a biography of Mary Mallon that goes beyond the typhoid scandal of her controversial life, and explores issues such as her treatment by medical and legal officials, human and constitutional rights, and the science of pathology. Discusses her later years, and her death in 1938.

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The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox

Jennifer Lee Carrell · 474 pages

A timely book about history's first desperate efforts to conquer smallpoxThe Speckled Monster tells the dramatic story of two parents who dared to fight back against smallpox. After barely surviving the agony of smallpox themselves, they flouted eighteenth-century medicine by borrowing folk knowledge from African slaves and Eastern women in frantic bids to protect their children. From their hero

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The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years

Sonia Shah · 307 pages

Traces the centuries-long battle to treat and prevent malaria in numerous regions of the world while revealing how hundreds of millions of people are infected annually in spite of available preventions.

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Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It

Gina Kolata · 338 pages

The fascinating, true story of the world's deadliest disease. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic felled the young and healthy virtually overnight. An estimated forty million people died as the epidemic raged. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. As many American soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu as were killed in battle during World War I. And no area of the globe was safe. Es

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Polio: An American Story

David M. Oshinsky · 342 pages

[This book] tells the ... story of the polio terror and of the intense effort to find a cure, from the March of Dimes to the discovery of the Salk and Sabin vaccines--and beyond.-Dust jacket.

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The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

Steven Johnson · 299 pages

A thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London-and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world.From the dynamic thinker routinely compared to Malcolm Gladwell, E. O. Wilson, and James Gleick, The Ghost Map is a riveting page-turner with a real-life historical hero that

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Viruses, Plagues and History

Michael B.A. Oldstone · 305 pages

"Nearly 300 million people were killed by smallpox over the course of the twentieth century. During the years 1918 and 1919, a deadly variant of the influenza strain claimed over 20 million lives. And today we face new viral threats: mad cow disease, the Hantavirus, and of course, AIDS. As Michael Oldstone illustrates here, the story of viruses and the story of humanity have overlapped since the d

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