Early next year, I'll be teaching "Perspectives on Pandemics," a course for Eldercollege here on the North Shore—going back to the Athenian and Justinianic plagues and the Black Death, but focusing on COVID-19. I'm pulling together a suggested reading list for my students, and it occurred to me that others might want to explore some of these titles as well. So here they are. Some include links to my Tyee reviews; others will be mentioned in a long article I'm working on. I'll update this list from time to time.
Peter Baldwin, Fighting the First Wave: Why the Coronavirus Was Tackled So Differently Across the Globe. Cambridge University Press, 2021. My review: https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/03/30/Best-Book-Written-About-COVID-Pandemic/
Alex De Waal, New Pandemics, Old Politics: Two Hundred Years of War on Disease and Its Alternatives. Polity Press, 2021. My review: https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2021/07/09/All-Plagues-Are-Political/
Elaine Dewar, On the Origin of the Deadliest Pandemic in 100 Years: An Investigation. Biblioasis, 2021.
Fang Fang, Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City, translated by Michael Berry. HarperCollins, 2020. My review: https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2020/05/27/Wuhan-Diary-Book/
Richard Horton, The Covid-19 Catastrophe: What’s Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again. Polity Press, 2020. My review: https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2020/06/22/Only-Newly-Vigilant-Society-Can-Stop-Next-Pandemic/
Colin Kahl & Thomas Wright, Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order. St. Martin’s Press, 2021.
Michael Lewis, The Premonition. W.W. Norton, 2021. My review: https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2021/05/18/Hot-Pandemic-Book-Poses-Danger/
Rupa Marya & Raj Patel, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021.
Jon Sternfeld, Unprepared: America in the Time of Coronavirus. Bloomsbury, 2021. My review: https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2020/12/22/Unprepared-America-Time-Coronavirus-Book/
Steven Taylor: The Psychology of Pandemics: Preparing for the Next Global Outbreak of Infectious Disease. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019. My review: https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2020/07/10/Mental-Toll-Covid-Doctors-Saw-Coming/
Adam Tooze, Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy. Viking 2021.
Lawrence Wright, The Plague Year: America in the Time of COVID. Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.
