Pandemics

A Very Short Introduction

By: Christian W. McMillen

Narrated by: Joe Barrett

Length: 3 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

Christian W. McMillen provides a concise yet comprehensive account of pandemics throughout human history, illustrating how pandemic disease has shaped history and, at the same time, social behavior has influenced pandemic disease.

This Very Short Introduction describes history's major pandemics-plague, tuberculosis, malaria, smallpox, cholera, influenza, and HIV/AIDS-highlighting how each disease's biological characteristics affected its pandemic development. McMillen discusses state responses to pandemics, such as quarantine, isolation, travel restrictions, and other forms of social control, and pays special attention to the rise of public health and the explosion of medical research in the wake of pandemics, especially as the germ theory of disease emerged in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries. Today, medicine is able to control all of these diseases, yet some of them are still devastating in much of the developing world. By assessing the relationship between poverty and disease and the geography of epidemics, McMillen offers an outspoken and thought-provoking point of view on the necessity for global governments to learn from past experiences and proactively cooperate to prevent any future epidemic.

©2016 Oxford University Press (P)2021 Tantor

Compact and informative

The actor, Joe Barrett, who read the book did an excellent job, and each chapter had a tremendous amount of information in a very small space. The authors hit the most important points and unique aspects of each pandemic were highlighted, and compared to other pandemics discussed in the book.