Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond

by Sonia Shah Narrated by Sonia Shah

Overview

From the author of*The Fever, a wide-ranging inquiry into the origins of pandemics

Interweaving history, original reportage, and personal narrative, Pandemic explores the origin of epidemics,*drawing parallels between the story of cholera--one of history's most disruptive and deadly pathogens--and the new pathogens that stalk humankind today, from Ebola and avian influenza to drug-resistant superbugs.

More than three hundred infectious diseases have emerged or reemerged in new territory during the past fifty years, and 90 percent of epidemiologists expect that one of them will cause a disruptive, deadly pandemic sometime in the next two generations.

To reveal how that might happen, Sonia Shah tracks each stage of cholera's dramatic journey from harmless microbe to world-changing pandemic, from its 1817 emergence in the South Asian hinterlands to its rapid dispersal across the nineteenth-century world and its latest beachhead in Haiti. She reports on the pathogens following in cholera's footsteps, from the MRSA bacterium that besieges her own family to the never-before-seen killers emerging from China's wet markets, the surgical wards of New Delhi, the slums of Port-au-Prince, and the suburban backyards of the East Coast.

By delving into the convoluted science, strange politics, and checkered history of one of the world's deadliest diseases,*Pandemic*reveals what the next epidemic might look like--and what we can do to prevent it.

Editorial Reviews

APRIL 2016 - AudioFile

Nine and a half hours of the history and biology of fatal disease transmission may not be everyone’s listening pleasure, but you do come away feeling this is something you, and everybody else, should hear. Author Sonia Shah is not a practiced narrator, but her perspective as a scientist and mother gives her narration authority and immediacy. And she definitely knows what she’s talking about. Historically, governments have handled disease outbreaks badly, and have been slow to warn citizens of the full danger they face. Ignorance and denial inevitably heightened the toll. Shah tells grim stories that are always most terrifying in terms of what was to come. Yet her overall account is implicitly reaffirming in its “history” of all the outbreaks that did not occur, thanks to modern science, responsible government, and the vigilance of an informed public. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

01/25/2016
In this absorbing, complex, and ominous look at the dangers posed by pathogens in our daily lives, science journalist Shah (The Fever) cautions that there are no easy solutions. Of particular note is the challenge of tracking those pathogens that remain uncontained and which could overtake humans in a pandemic. As an example, Shah tracks the waterborne Vibrio cholerae bacterium from its home in the southwest Indian Ocean as it radiated from China and India to Paris in 1832, and then sailed to the U.S. with emigrants from cholera-plagued Europe heading to the eastern coast of North America—at the time there were 5,800 reported cases and nearly 3,000 deaths in New York City alone. Shah then meticulously dissects the conditions that made cholera’s transmission so effective and new outbreaks inevitable, including filthy water, overcrowding, political corruption and inaction, scapegoating, and even the expedited expansion of the human population by the harnessing of fossil fuels. “For most of our history, we’ve been unaware of pathogens’ role in our lives,” Shah writes, adding that most of the challenges still lay ahead. Shah’s warning is certainly troubling, and this important medical and social history is worthy of attention—and action. Agent: Charlotte Sheedy, Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

Praise for Pandemic

"Shah's book should be required reading." —The New York Review of Books

"The world’s ability to put the lid on pandemics has come a long way since the days when the plague, cholera and smallpox ravaged unchecked. Ms Shah’s book is a superbly written account of how we got here and what might await us." —The Economist

"[Shah] has succeeded in producing a lively, rigorously researched and highly informative read." —The Wall Street Journal

“Investigative science journalist Shah (The Fever, 2011) is at it again, and if the words, and beyond, in her latest book’s subtitle don’t grab a reader’s attention, they should . . . Yes, Shah is back and in rare form. And this time it’s personal.”—Donna Chavez, Booklist (starred review)

“Shrewdly articulated . . . thought-provoking and well-documented” —Nature Microbiology

“[A] grounded, bracingly intelligent study” —Nature

“Shah proves a disquieting Virgil, guiding us through the hells ruled by [infectious diseases] . . . the power of Shah's account lies in her ability to track simultaneously the multiple dimensions of the public-health crises we are facing.” —The Chicago Tribune

“In this absorbing, complex, and ominous look at the dangers posed by pathogens in our daily lives, science journalist Shah (The Fever) cautions that there are no easy solutions . . . Shah’s warning is certainly troubling, and this important medical and social history is worthy of attention—and action." —Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Fever

“An often rollicking read . . . Shah has put together an engrossing cast of doctors, malariologists and historical figures.” —TIM MORRISON, Time

“Sonia Shah ’s tour-de-force history of malaria will convince you that the real sound track to our collective fate [is] the syncopated whine-slap, whine-slap of man and mosquito duking it out over the eons.” —ABIGAIL ZUGER , M . D ., The New York Times

“This insightful book explores the human struggle with malaria not just from a scientific angle, which is cogently detailed without being overwhelming, but also from sociological and anthropological perspectives . . . Shah is to be commended.” —DENNIS ROSEN, The Boston Globe

“The lessons of history should give us pause . . . Many [issues] are brilliantly exposed in Ms. Shah’s book .” — W. F . B YNUM, The Wall Street Journal

“Meticulously researched and passionately written . . . One of this year ’s most significant science books for the general reader.” —DAVID WALTON, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

“A fascinating history . . . Insightful, even revelatory.” —WENDY ORENT , The New Republic

APRIL 2016 - AudioFile

Nine and a half hours of the history and biology of fatal disease transmission may not be everyone’s listening pleasure, but you do come away feeling this is something you, and everybody else, should hear. Author Sonia Shah is not a practiced narrator, but her perspective as a scientist and mother gives her narration authority and immediacy. And she definitely knows what she’s talking about. Historically, governments have handled disease outbreaks badly, and have been slow to warn citizens of the full danger they face. Ignorance and denial inevitably heightened the toll. Shah tells grim stories that are always most terrifying in terms of what was to come. Yet her overall account is implicitly reaffirming in its “history” of all the outbreaks that did not occur, thanks to modern science, responsible government, and the vigilance of an informed public. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2015-12-06
Vibrio cholerae was once a species of marine bacteria attached to some plankton in the coastal wetlands of the Bay of Bengal. In grim detail, science journalist Shah (The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years, 2010, etc.) demonstrates how it became the global source of horrendous deaths and how the story of cholera is paradigmatic of how pandemics happen. Cholera emerged in the early 1800s after the East India Company began to fill in and settle the wetlands. Disease might occur if a fisherman swallowed some brackish water, a direct transmission from the vibrio to a human. But to make the jump to human-to-human transmission, the vibrio changed. It adapted ways to form colonies, making it harder to dislodge from the human gut, and it developed a toxin that flushes all the fluids from the body, causing death by dehydration. Still, cholera might have stayed local except for other 19th-century developments: steamships and newly dug canals and waterways moved goods and people rapidly across land and sea, creating new waves of infection while also swelling the populations of cities, which lacked clean drinking water and proper waste disposal. By the 1830s, cholera was devastating Paris, London, and New York, exacerbated by the arrogance of medical elites who swore by the miasma theory of disease. Then, add political corruption after the cause was known: city contractors asked to supply clean water but substituting foul; government officials who would deny the existence of disease, so as not to discourage business. The ingredients for pandemics remain potent in a jet age with deforested lands, ever- growing cities, the consumption of bush meat and other exotic wild cuisine (from illegal "wet markets"), antibiotic resistance, inadequate disease surveillance, and destructive cultural attitudes, ranging from abject fear to blame to indifference. Shah covers all of these aspects in vivid prose and through revealing eyewitness accounts. This is not fun reading, but it's necessary—one can only hope that it drives more effective surveillance and rapid response to tomorrow's plagues.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169091076
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/23/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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