A well-researched, engaging economic history of pandemics.
The intersection of pandemics and economics across world history is explored in this nonfiction book.
A former soldier assigned to the United States Army’s 485th Preventative Medicine Unit, co-author Kotok notes in the book’s introduction that “disease has killed more soldiers throughout all wars than swords, arrows, bullets, and bombs have.” Following the example of United States generals from George Washington to Dwight Eisenhower, who emphasized the long-term threat of disease to national security, Kotok has spent decades studying the economic impact of pandemics throughout history. Inspired by a 2020 research study released by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (a document cited heavily throughout this work) in the wake of Covid-19, Kotok and his co-authors Englund, Erwin, and Sweet offer a timely, well-researched economic history of pandemics. Divided into five parts, the book begins with an assessment of the Federal Reserve’s response to Covid-19 before transitioning into a lengthier exploration of pandemics across history. The second section offers chapter-length historical overviews of seven pandemics, from the Bronze Age and Roman Antonine Plague through the Black Death of the Middle Ages. Part three transitions to the 20th century, with a particular emphasis on the Federal Reserve’s response to the influenza pandemics of 1918 and 1957. Parts four and five focus on Covid-19, providing readers with in-depth, data-driven analysis of the pandemic’s impact on labor, productivity, and other key economic measures. These sections also discuss the impact of stimulus assistance, which the authors suggest “cushioned the shock” to the economy while noting that the initial round of stimulus mostly tended to help larger businesses. “We are still seeing lingering impacts of the pandemic,” the authors assert from the vantage of 2025, highlighting Covid-19’s connection to inflation, the decline of small businesses, and impact on skilled workers.
While written by a team of economic scholars who emphasize the hard, quantitative data at the center of their research, the work highlights the human toll of the disease. Dedicated to both frontline healthcare professionals as well as Federal Reserve employees, the book reflects the humanistic belief that the economy exists to serve people—the authors observe that any “economy and its financial market function best when market agents are not sick and do not have disease risk on their minds.” This empathetic perspective, in addition to the erudite economic analysis and engaging historical overview, makes this an accessible work for a wide audience. The author of four previous economic books, Kotok here collaborates with Englund (chief economist for Action Economics, LLC), Erwin (a budding historian), and Sweet (a veteran copy editor in the financial industry), whose combined strengths make for an impressively interdisciplinary work backed by a myriad of scholarly footnotes (the authors are careful to moderate their analysis with dozens of full-color charts, photograph, historical art, and other visual elements found throughout the work). Englund contributes a concluding “Chart Book” that provides readers with an eye-opening visual study of Covid-19’s impact on housing, factory output, and household incomes, among other economic indicators.
A well-researched, engaging economic history of pandemics.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9798989362523
Page Count: 552
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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