Pandemic: A Global History of Deadly Infections

In the last 50 years, over 300 infectious diseases have emerged for the first time or re-emerged in new territories. Experts around the world are preparing for a devastating lethal epidemic.
Science journalist Sonia Shah illustrates how this could happen by... drawing parallels between cholera—one of the most dangerous and frightening pathogens in the world—and new diseases that are lurking today.

Describing the stages of cholera's dramatic march—from a harmless microbe to a pandemic capable of changing the world—Shah discusses the pathogens that follow in its wake: starting with the MRSA bacteria that struck her own family, to new, previously unseen killers appearing in Chinese food markets, in surgical wards of Delhi, in the slums of Port-au-Prince, and on the city outskirts of the East Coast. The picture is both impressive and alarming.
The book deeply explores the issues of complicated science, strange politics, and the tangled history of one of the world's most terrifying diseases, warning about a possible future that cannot be ignored.