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THE PANDEMIC CENTURY

Name: THE PANDEMIC CENTURY
Author: Mark Honigsbaum
ISBN: 978-0-393-25475-4

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF PANIC, HYSTERIA, AND HUBRIS

by Mark Honigsbaum ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 9, 2019

Avoiding the hyperbole that contemporary media relished, Honigsbaum mixes superb medical history with vivid portraits of the...

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Powerful accounts of a dozen epidemics from the last 100 years.

Journalist and medical historian Honigsbaum (Arts and Sciences/City Univ., London; A History of the Great Influenza Pandemics: Death, Panic and Hysteria, 1830-1920, 2013, etc.) begins this lively, gruesome, and masterful book with the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected 500 million people and may have killed more than 100 million. Many that followed, including AIDS, Ebola, Legionnaires’ disease, SARS, and Zika, are familiar to most readers. Lost to history—but no less terrifying—were the Los Angeles plague epidemic of 1924 and the wave of parrot fever that swept the nation after 1929. All mobilized the best scientific resources of the time, with results ranging from dramatic to ineffectual. Fortunately, all eventually died out, but more are inevitable as humans crowd into cities as well as into the wilderness and jungle, where new organisms await; douse our bodies’ bacteria with antibiotics; and exchange viruses with pets and domestic animals. “Time and again,” writes the author, “we assist microbes to occupy new ecological niches and spread to new places in ways that usually become apparent after the event. And to judge by the recent run of pandemics and epidemics, the process seems to be speeding up. If HIV and SARS were wake-up calls, then Ebola and Zika confirmed it.” Most pandemics arrived without warning. Physicians and epidemiologists quickly described what was happening, often wrongly at first but eventually getting it right after massive research, brilliant insights, and no lack of courage. As Honigsbaum amply shows, politicians and journalists often ignored bad news until they couldn’t and then opposed measures that might harm the local economy. Since even medical experts tended to overreact at first, the media can be excused for proclaiming the apocalypse, but they showed no lack of enthusiasm.

Avoiding the hyperbole that contemporary media relished, Honigsbaum mixes superb medical history with vivid portraits of the worldwide reactions to each event.

Pub Date: April 9, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-393-25475-4

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019

Categories:

HISTORY | MODERN | GENERAL HISTORY

- BOOK REVIEW
VALVERDE’S GOLD
by Mark Honigsbaum

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FEVER TRAIL
by Mark Honigsbaum

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MANDATE OF HEAVEN

A NEW GENERATION OF ENTREPRENEURS, DISSIDENTS, BOHEMIANS, AND TECHNOCRATS LAYS CLAIM TO CHINA'S FUTURE

by Orville Schell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1994

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The latest in a splendid series by Schell (Discos and Democracy, 1988, etc.), extending over 20 years and tracking momentous changes in the world's most populous country. Beginning almost where he left off in his last book, Schell describes the events at Tiananmen Square and their aftermath. The square has long been both a symbol of the power of successive regimes as well as a traditional site at which dissent was expressed. The demonstrations, which extended far beyond a rarefied group of students, journalists, and intellectuals, soon began to involve the urban proletariat, the very vanguard of the revolution. Deng Xiaoping, having crushed their dissent with great brutality, concluded that only economic development would save the regime. Deng is the latest in the line of Chinese reformers who have believed that China could borrow the technology and managerial methods of the West without affecting Chinese culture and values. For the moment, says Schell, the middle class has struck a Faustian bargain with the Communist Party, forgoing political confrontation while economic liberalization continues. ``By 1991,'' Schell notes, ``almost nobody in China was taking Marxism seriously.'' But the country presents the paradox of almost wild capitalist enthusiasm (with strange elements, including the success of a $1,500 limited edition Mao watch with diamond- and sapphire-studded gold casing) and a Stalinist security apparatus that presides over labor camps with 1020 million prisoners. China is now, Schell writes, irrevocably part of the world economic system, but he does not venture to predict the outcome. Schell doesn't give as immediate a sense of life in China as do Kristof and WuDunn in China Wakes (p. 826), nor has he travelled as widely, but he brings great analytical power and understanding to one of the most important political stories of our time. (Author tour)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-671-70132-0

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL HISTORY

- BOOK REVIEW
MY OLD HOME
by Orville Schell

- BOOK REVIEW
WEALTH AND POWER
by Orville Schell ; John Delury

- BOOK REVIEW
VIRTUAL TIBET
by Orville Schell

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FLESH AND STONE

THE BODY AND THE CITY IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION

by Richard Sennett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1994

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An expansive history of Western civilization's evolving conception of the human body and that concept's influence on the erection of cities. Sennett (Sociology/New York Univ.; The Conscience of the Eye, 1991, etc.) argues that the homogenization of contemporary culture is aided and abetted by the failure of modern architecture and urban planning to accommodate the physical and sensory needs of the human body. This is more than mere postmodern sterility to Sennett. He sees this failing as an extension of the ``enduring problem'' of Western civilization: the inability or refusal of those with the power to build cities to honor ``the dignity of the body and diversity of human bodies.'' From Pericles' Athens to Robert Moses's New York, Sennett incorporates discussions of sexuality, religion, politics, medicine, and economics into a historical grand tour of great cities whose buildings, streets, and public squares elevated the status of the ruling elite and diminished that of common citizens. Along the way, we find out how it felt to witness an execution by guillotine in revolutionary Paris, attend a Roman banquet, and observe a trial in ancient Greece, where courtrooms reflected the demands of a participatory democracy—three-foot-high walls and a jury box big enough for the minimum 201 jurors. Though Sennett ably surveys the ideological landscapes of the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds, these quotidian revelations are what enliven the book. By exposing the principles of individualism and personal comfort that form the most fundamental assumptions of 20th-century consumer culture, Sennett reminds modern readers that they trade a great deal for comfort—namely their engagement with one another. In so doing, he debunks the myth that the evolution of cities has been one of unfettered progress, or that progress is synonymous with improvement. Passionate, exhaustively researched, and original. (Photos and maps, not seen)