Contagious

By Priscilla Wald,

Book cover of Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative

Book description

How should we understand the fear and fascination elicited by the accounts of communicable disease outbreaks that proliferated, following the emergence of HIV, in scientific publications and the mainstream media? The repetition of particular characters, images, and story lines-of Patients Zero and superspreaders, hot zones and tenacious microbes-produced a formulaic…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked Contagious as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This is an amazing book if you want to understand that disease isn’t just medical, it’s also cultural.

Contagious really describes how culture influences how we understand illness and how that affects treatment and care of individuals, including who we blame and how we understand risk.

People like to think of medicine and science as being detached and objective, but this book shows that simply isn’t true. 

From Andrea's list on reads before the next pandemic.

If you love Contagious...

Ad

Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Want books like Contagious?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Contagious.

Browse books like Contagious

Book cover of Once Upon A Virus: AIDS Legends and Vernacular Risk Perception
Book cover of Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS
Book cover of How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,883

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 If you like Contagious, you might also like...

Book cover of Locked In Locked Out: Surviving a Brainstem Stroke

Locked In Locked Out by Shawn Jennings,

Can there be life after a brainstem stroke?

After Dr. Shawn Jennings, a busy family physician, suffered a brainstem stroke on May 13, 1999, he woke from a coma locked inside his body, aware and alert but unable to communicate or move. Once he regained limited movement in his left…

Book cover of The Complete Eldercare Planner: Where to Start, Which Questions to Ask, and How to Find Help

The Complete Eldercare Planner by Joy Loverde,

Trusted for more than three decades by family caregivers and professionals alike, this comprehensive and reassuring caregiving guide offers the crucial information you need to look after your elders and plan for the future.

Being a caregiver for aging parents, close friends and family, and other elders in your life…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in epidemics, HIV/AIDS, and HIV?

Epidemics 50 books
HIV/AIDS 71 books
HIV 15 books