The Plague Year

America in the Time of COVID

By: Lawrence Wright

Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin

Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, and the pandemic novel The End of October: an unprecedented, momentous account of Covid-19 - its origins, its wide-ranging repercussions, and the ongoing global fight to contain it

"A book of panoramic breadth...managing to surprise us about even those episodes we...thought we knew well...[With] lively exchanges about spike proteins and nonpharmaceutical interventions and disease waves, Wright’s storytelling dexterity makes all this come alive.” (The New York Times Book Review)

From the fateful first moments of the outbreak in China to the storming of the U.S. Capitol to the extraordinary vaccine rollout, Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year tells the story of Covid-19 in authoritative, galvanizing detail and with the full drama of events on both a global and intimate scale, illuminating the medical, economic, political, and social ramifications of the pandemic.

Wright takes us inside the CDC, where a first round of faulty test kits lost America precious time...inside the halls of the White House, where Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger’s early alarm about the virus was met with confounding and drastically costly skepticism...into a Covid ward in a Charlottesville hospital, with an idealistic young woman doctor from the town of Little Africa, South Carolina...into the precincts of prediction specialists at Goldman Sachs...into Broadway’s darkened theaters and Austin’s struggling music venues...inside the human body, diving deep into the science of how the virus and vaccines function - with an eye-opening detour into the history of vaccination and of the modern anti-vaccination movement. And in this full accounting, Wright makes clear that the medical professionals around the country who’ve risked their lives to fight the virus reveal and embody an America in all its vulnerability, courage, and potential.

In turns steely-eyed, sympathetic, infuriated, unexpectedly comical, and always precise, Lawrence Wright is a formidable guide, slicing through the dense fog of misinformation to give us a 360-degree portrait of the catastrophe we thought we knew.

©2021 Lawrence Wright (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“A virtuoso feat.... [Wright has] given us a book of panoramic breadth, [ranging] from science to politics to economics to culture with a commanding scrutiny, managing to surprise us about even those episodes we have only recently lived through and thought we knew well. The story he tells is immediate and often piercingly intimate.... The Plague Year has lively exchanges about spike proteins and nonpharmaceutical interventions and disease waves, [and] Wright’s storytelling dexterity makes all this come alive.” (Sonali Deraniyagala, The New York Times Book Review)

“Arresting.... Lean-limbed, immersive.... Rich with peerless reportage and incisive critique.... Translates the complexities of epidemiology into plain English.... Wright is at his commanding best...when he places the pandemic in historical context - his detours into the Black Plague and the 1918 Spanish flu are narrative marvels - and in his portraits of the players.” (Hamilton Cain, Minneapolis Star Tribune)

“[An] incredibly crafted telling.... [Wright] is an earnest prober, with sober-minded curiosity.... [He] provides a well-wrought map covering the institutions and politicians that failed America during this stretch of the pandemic [and] crucially highlights those that also saved us - the first responders and the reasonable.” (Eric Allen Been, The Boston Globe)

Great book, but passionate at times

I really enjoyed the title, and it brought to light much of the struggles and calamities of 2020 into a single year. I did think the author was a bit passionate at times in his vilification of Trump. This criticism is highly deserved but delivered almost in melodramatic fashion at times. I would nevertheless still recommend the book to anyone!

Could’ve been a classic

The Plague Year is just that, the story of covid year one. It has an unorthodox pattern of tracking the virus. The book is almost like snapshots of the outbreak. You follow people at the CDC, people in the government, frontline medical workers and more. Although I did enjoy the book, I thought that with more time maybe the writer could’ve deepened the narrative structure. Because it feels like a glimpse of covid more than the full picture. But Lawrence Wright is a great writer!

Plague of poor leadership

Sometimes a bit too preachy on racial and wealth disparities. I most appreciated knowing the time lines of what we knew and who knew what about the coronavirus.

Familiar events pulled together very well!

There were a few events that I didn’t know happened but the best part of this book is the way it is pulled together. Excellent book!

Great overview of the pandemic year!

I loved Wright’s End of October, and was amused that he went from fiction to fact. I also liked that he laid blame or criticism where he thought it was deserved, which included the CDC and Fauci (while still praising). Also he gave credit to those who deserved it, which included Birx, and made me rethink my criticism of her. I highly recommend this book, and thought it was very thorough!

Balanced Account of a Horrible Year

Not just a “Trump was an idiot and People Died” kind of book. In fact,IMNSHO, he went easy on the Biggest Loser in History”.

However it was a detailed objective balanced account of the first year of the plague (not over folks) interspersed with personal often heart-breaking stories of those so badly affected by piss-poor governmental decisions. Long read/listen but well worth the price.

A simple narrative of very complex events

An (almost) unbiased narrative of the geo-political and pandemic related events that swirled around us in 2020. Its an easy listen on very complex subjects. Lawrence Wright shows us how we all have become the subjects of literature for better or for worse.
Vaccinated & masked.

Amazing

This book flew by. The author does a tremendous job of keeping the reader engaged and explaining medical concepts in an understandable way.

Great review of a chaotic time

Wonderful to pull together all this info, but at times feels like it just plopped very different parts of the big picture together and had me wondering within single chapters how this info was related. Good emotive reader with good pronunciations.

Great Book

Lawrence Wright is an amazing writer. This book tells a compelling story, even though we all lived through the pandemic.