Showing titles in Contagious Diseases

Brought to you by Penguin. Thomas Asbridge’s remarkable new book reveals the global impact of humanity’s greatest natural disaster, and the terrible human cost of this calamity. In the mid-fourteenth century, a lethal plague struck the medieval world, causing unimaginable suffering and...

THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER CHOSEN BY WATERSTONES AS ONE OF THEIR BEST HISTORY BOOKS OF 2024 'Compulsive . . . A wonderful display of how modern archaeology can bring hidden histories to life' Daily Telegraph 'Gripping . . . I found it hard to put down' Evening Standard 'Another really...

Brought to you by Penguin. Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it. In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient...

The immersive deep dive into your immune system from the brains behind the most popular science channel on YouTube, KURZGESAGT - IN A NUTSHELL. Narrated by Steve Taylor, the unforgettable voice of Kurzgesagt videos. You wake up and feel a tickle in your throat. Your head hurts. You're mildly...

In the middle of the second century AD, Rome was at its prosperous and powerful apex. The emperor Marcus Aurelius reigned over a vast territory that stretched from Britain to Egypt. The Roman-made peace, or Pax Romana, seemed to be permanent. Then, apparently out of nowhere, a sudden sickness struck the legions and laid waste to cities, including Rome itself. This fast-spreading disease, known now as the Antonine plague, may have been history’s first pandemic. Soon after its arrival, the Empire began its downward trajectory toward decline and fall.

This program is read by the author. A vital, timely text on the viruses that cause pandemics and how to face them, by the New York Times bestselling author of How Not to Die. From tuberculosis to bird flu and HIV to coronavirus, these infectious diseases share a common origin story: human...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An urgent wake-up call about the future of emerging viruses and a gripping account of the doctors and scientists fighting to protect us, told through the story of the deadly 2013–2014 Ebola epidemic “Crisis in the Red Zone reads like a thriller. That the...

Reports suggest that over 100m people around the world are living with Long COVID (more than 1.5m in the UK) yet reliable, clear information and guidance remains scarce. This book is the definitive guide to understanding, managing and treating the condition. Written by the world's leading immunologist Professor Danny Altmann and expert patient Gez Medinger, The Long COVID Handbook translates cutting-edge science, patient-led research and practical guidance with clarity.

A magnificently reported and soulfully crafted exploration of the human immune system–the key to health and wellness, life and death. An epic, first-of-its-kind book, entwining leading-edge scientific discovery with the intimate stories of four individual lives, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning...

In The Black Death: New Lessons from Recent Research, celebrated medievalist Dorsey Armstrong shares the fascinating new story of this old pandemic—revealed by dedicated researchers working with 21st-century technologies and a knowledge of language and history that now provide input from all geographic areas of the medieval world. In seven engaging lectures, Professor Armstrong corrects explanations of the pandemic that are now known to be inaccurate and offers a more robust description of plague biology than has ever been known.

In mid-January 2020, scientists Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci learned of how a new virus that had emerged in Wuhan, China, was spreading. Recognising the threat at once, they dropped everything and committed themselves to developing a vaccine against the disease that would soon be known as COVID-19. No one believed it was possible. But by December, the revolutionary BioNTech-Pfizer mRNA inoculation became the first clinically approved COVID-19 vaccine. Soon it was being injected into the arms of millions, turning the tide on the deadliest pandemic in living memory.

Brought to you by Penguin. With a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people and a global reach, the Spanish flu of 1918–1920 was the greatest human disaster, not only of the twentieth century, but possibly in all of recorded history. And yet, in our popular conception it exists largely...

From tuberculosis to bird flu and HIV to coronavirus, these infectious diseases share a common origin story: human interaction with animals. Otherwise known as zoonotic diseases for their passage from animals to humans, these pathogens—both pre-existing ones and those newly identified—emerge...

Moving, honest and inspiring – this is a nurse’s true story of life in a busy A&E department during the Covid-19 crisis. Working in A&E is a challenging job but nurse Louise Curtis loves it. She was newly qualified as an advanced clinical practitioner, responsible for life or death decisions...

Biomedical researcher Professor John Tregoning tells the unlikely story of how, against all odds, we manage to stay alive. Taking an organ-by-organ tour of the human body, Tregoning embarks on his own experimental quest, testing "life-extending" diets and exercise regimes to separate fact from fad. Exploring the multitude of ways our bodies can kill us, from inherited genetic conditions, through heart attacks, arrythmias and angina, onto the delicate workings of the brain, Live Forever? offers compelling insight into how our bodies work, how we can best look after them.

Over the past 50 years, rates of autoimmunity and chronic disease have exploded. In this provocative book, Dr. Thomas Cowan argues for a direct causal relationship to a corresponding increase in the number of vaccines American children typically receive. The goal of these vaccines is precisely what we’re now seeing in such abundance among our chronically ill children: the provocation of immune response. Cowan looks at emerging evidence that certain childhood illnesses are actually protective of disease later in life.

#1 New York Times Bestseller The memoir by the doctor who became a beacon of hope for millions through the COVID pandemic, and whose six-decade career in high-level public service put him in the room with seven presidents “An eventful autobiography [and] a classic American story…Gripping...

Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, Scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet, despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu and the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles, to the 1930 'parrot fever' pandemic and the more recent SARS, Ebola and Zika, the last 100 years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms.

The story of viruses and humanity is a story of fear and ignorance, of grief and heartbreak, and of great bravery and sacrifice. Michael Oldstone tells all these stories as he illuminates the history of the devastating diseases that have tormented humanity, focusing mostly on the most famous viruses. For this revised edition, Oldstone includes discussions of new viruses like SARS, bird flu, virally caused cancers, chronic wasting disease, and West Nile. Viruses, Plagues, and History paints a sweeping portrait of humanity's long-standing conflict with our unseen viral enemies.

The definitive social history of tuberculosis, from its origins as a haunting mystery to its modern reemergence that now threatens populations around the world. It killed novelist George Orwell, Eleanor Roosevelt, and millions of others – rich and poor. Desmond Tutu, Amitabh Bachchan, and...