Histories

After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion, 2019, by Anthony Petro, demonstrates how religious leaders shaped debates over sexual morality and public health during the AIDS crisis. (Recommended by Rachel Kranson)

American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to COVID-19, 2021, by Yale legal historian John Fabian Witt, is described in a review by the libertarian American Institute for Economic Research as a solid introductory text on the the interaction between legal institutions and public health, while New York Times and Washington Post reviewers found its analysis of the tension between sanitationsim and quarantinism insightful for considering future public health policy.

Ancient Rome Has an Urgent Warning for Us, by classics professor Kyle Harper, notes that the Antonine Plague might have been one of history’s first pandemics, and argues that “living through a pandemic not only causes us to see different layers of the past, but can also inspire us to listen to our ancient sources more empathetically,” New York Times, February 15, 2021.

In Ethics Talk: Immunity Status, Social Privilege, and the Novel Coronavirus, a video edition of Ethics Talk, AMA Journal of Ethics editor in chief, Audiey Kao talks with Stanford history professor Kathryn Olivarius about how yellow fever epidemics during the antebellum South provide a historical lens to examine power asymmetries and health inequities in the COVID-19 era.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry examines, with particular relevance for today, governments’ responses and lack of response to the 1918 flu pandemic. It is reported that George W. Bush’s reading of the book prompted him to initiate a comprehensive pandemic plan, some of which was realized and formed a foundation for the current federal response to COVID-19, and some of which was not sustained. Barry discussed his book in an On the Media interview on November 27, 2020.

History suggests the pandemic may permanently alter our way of life:

• ‘The 1918 flu is still with us’: The deadliest pandemic ever is still causing problems today, Washington Post, September 3, 2020
• How Tuberculosis Shaped Victorian Fashion, Smithsonian Magazine, May 10, 2016

Writers on economics and technology agree:

• The Small-Business Die-Off Is Here, May 4, 2020
• The Pandemic Will Change American Retail Forever, April 27, 2020

In How Pandemics End, science writer Gina Kolata describes—in relation to past pandemics and the current crisis—the difference between a pandemic ending socially and medically

Nature reviewed its top five suggestions for histories to help us understand the current pandemic:

• Historian Frank Snowden argues that infectious diseases have shaped social evolution no less powerfully than have wars, revolutions and economic crises. (5 min read, from 2019)
• The story of the race to stop a plague epidemic in San Francisco that broke out in 1900 is a rich history of epidemiology, political wrangling and scientific denialism. (6 min read, from 2019)
• The 1918 influenza pandemic probably infected 500 million people — one-third of the world’s population at the time. There was a wide-ranging failure of medicine and governments — which is one reason why its history has been long neglected. (5 min read, from 2017)
• An analysis of the fraught campaign to contain the 2013–16 Ebola crisis reveals the common threads of dysfunction that run through responses to epidemics. (5 min read, from 2018)
• Rediscover pioneering epidemiologist and anaesthesiologist John Snow and his meticulous mapping of the cholera epidemic in London. (5 min read, from 2013)

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney—a journalist covers the global 1918 pandemic in a very accessible way—recommended by Bridget Keown

Pandemic, Creating a Usable Past: Epidemic History, COVID-19, and the Future of Health was presented May 8-9 by the American Association for the History of Medicine with the support of the Princeton University Department of History. The very thoughtful talks, presented for the general public by leading historians of medicine, are archived here with descriptive titles. The program included sessions on the disparate experiences of the pandemic, frontline workers’ experiences, civil liberties, surveillance practices, the spread of dubious theories, and future of public health.

In Pandemics of the Past Jon Meacham reflects on Barbara W. Tuchman’s account of the bubonic plague in her 1978 book A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century and Stephen Coss’s 2016 book The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic That Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics. The books demonstrate, Meacham argues (in his New York Times Book Review column on May 7, 2020), that the epidemics advanced civilization toward modernity and its embrace of science.

Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic by Richard MacKay—recommended by Bridget Keown

The Plague Year—The Mistakes and the Struggles Behind America’s Coronavirus Tragedy by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker, January 4 and 11, 2021

Plague-Making and the AIDS Epidemic: A Story of Discrimination by Gina Bright; according to Bridget Keown, Bright places epidemics in a social context and examines how we talk about people who suffer from and/or transmit diseases  

Howard Markel’s Quarantine!: Eastern European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892, published in 1999, examined the way that anti-immigrant sentiment informed the public health initiatives aimed at controlling turn-of-the-twentieth century epidemics. (Recommended by Rachel Kranson)

Stacking the Coffins: Influenza, War, and Revolution in Ireland, 1918-19  by Ida Milne—especially helpful because it addresses the trauma of an epidemic and the lifelong emotional burden it can place on survivors—recommended by Bridget Keown

Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health, by historian of medicine Judith Walzer Leavitt, tells the story of Mary Mallon, a victim not only of typhoid, but also prejudice against immigrants and women, who was isolated for life by public health authorities after she was found to have infected 22 New Yorkers between 1900 and 1907.

Visualizing the History of Pandemics—a frequently updated visual resource comparing the impact of COVID-19 to that of past pandemics, recommended by Brock Bahler

‘Write It Down’: Historian Suggests Keeping a Record of Life During Pandemic—Historian Herbert “Tico” Braun explains why it is important for us to write about our experience of this pandemic