Here are 67 books that Plagues Upon the Earth fans have personally recommended if you like
Plagues Upon the Earth.
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I find Plagues to be fascinating, especially having lived through COVID-19 (with masks and distancing and fear of catching an unknown sickness!). The Plague of London in 1665 especially interests me because it brings in the well-known character of The Plague Doctor. This iconic character is feared and admired (and still a very popular Halloween costume). I have done extensive research on the 1665 Plague in terms of how it affected food insecurity, homelessness, fear, trade routes, employment, and the different classes of a community.
I think this comic book is perfect for visual learners who are in middle-grade or read hi-low or ESL books. I found the illustrations to be modern and catchy. I think the copywriting is kid-friendly. I believe it’s a great book to learn about how sickness is spread and the wider implications of the Plague.
Every volume of Science Comics offers a complete introduction to a particular topic - dinosaurs, coral reefs, the solar system, volcanoes, bats, flying machines, and more. These gorgeously illustrated graphic novels offer wildly entertaining views of their subjects. Whether you're a fourth grader doing a natural science unit at school or a thirty year old with a secret passion for airplanes, these books are for you! This volume: In PLAGUES, we get to know the critters behind history's worst diseases. We delve into the biology and mechanisms of infections, diseases, and immunity, and also the incredible effect that technology and…
I have always been fascinated by the history of medicine, particularly the more macabre details. While researching my family lineage, I became especially interested in medieval medicine and the lives of English monarchs. I was honored to be asked to write a book on medicine in the middle ages, and I dove into the research head first. I have been lucky enough to write for several other publications, and I have self-published on Amazon. I enjoy writing historical fiction and my novel, Sleeping with the Impaler, was a book I truly enjoyed writing. I hope the books I recommended spark your interest as they will stay with me forever.
The Great Mortality was a key tool in my research for my book. John covered the Black Death in every country it devastated, such as England, Italy, and France. He touches on the effect the Black Death had on the church and the great lengths that were taken to protect the pope. He goes into morbid detail about the plague, and you get a real understanding of what these people went through. I can not recommend this book enough.
“Powerful, rich with details, moving, humane, and full of important lessons for an age when weapons of mass destruction are loose among us.” — Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb
The Great Plague is one of the most compelling events in human history—even more so now, when the notion of plague has never loomed larger as a contemporary public concern.
The plague that devastated Asia and Europe in the 14th century has been of never-ending interest to both scholarly and general readers. Many books on the plague rely on statistics to tell the story:…
I find Plagues to be fascinating, especially having lived through COVID-19 (with masks and distancing and fear of catching an unknown sickness!). The Plague of London in 1665 especially interests me because it brings in the well-known character of The Plague Doctor. This iconic character is feared and admired (and still a very popular Halloween costume). I have done extensive research on the 1665 Plague in terms of how it affected food insecurity, homelessness, fear, trade routes, employment, and the different classes of a community.
I loved this middle-grade book about plagues! It was a page-turner with interesting facts, fun stories, and great illustrations. I also found the easy-to-read history gripping. This book would be a great addition to home and school libraries. It is not just a reference book; it is a great MG read!
Myths! Lies! Secrets! Uncover the hidden truth about history's pandemics, from the Black Death to COVID-19. Perfect for fans of I Survived! and Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales.
During the Black Death in the 14th century, plague doctors wore creepy beaked masks filled with herbs. RIGHT? WRONG! Those masks were from a plague outbreak centuries later--and most doctors never wore anything like that at all!
With a mix of sidebars, illustrations, photos, and graphic panels, acclaimed author Kate Messner delivers the whole truth about diseases like the bubonic plague, cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, polio, influenza, and COVID-19.
I find Plagues to be fascinating, especially having lived through COVID-19 (with masks and distancing and fear of catching an unknown sickness!). The Plague of London in 1665 especially interests me because it brings in the well-known character of The Plague Doctor. This iconic character is feared and admired (and still a very popular Halloween costume). I have done extensive research on the 1665 Plague in terms of how it affected food insecurity, homelessness, fear, trade routes, employment, and the different classes of a community.
I think this book is for advanced middle-grade or even on the lower end of middle grade. I found it to be chocked full of facts, history, and information about deadly diseases. I think fans of “scary” kids’ (aka Bendy, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Haunted Canada) books will appreciate the real-life terrors of real-life diseases.
Perfect for young readers of I Survived and the Who Was series! Packed with graphics, photos, and facts for curious minds, this is a gripping look at pandemics through the ages.
The deadly outbreak of plague known as the Great Mortality, which struck Europe in the mid 1300s and raged for four centuries, wiped out more than 25 million people in the course of just two years. With its vicious onslaught, life changed for millions of people almost instantaneously.
Deadly pandemics have always been a part of life, from the Great Mortality of the Middle Ages, to the Spanish Influenza…
I’ve written over 30 novels, mostly fantasy, until meeting a prepper years ago in a tavern with a cold beer and a quiet table. He explained that EVERYTHING depends on farmers and trucks carrying food to us. My last six or eight novels dwell on that one theme, no matter if the cause is volcanoes erupting, social breakdown, or an upcoming war. When the food is scarce…well, that’s the background for books I enjoy.
This 1962 novel was the first I read of this genre, and it stuck with me. While somewhat dated (a lot), it held my attention again a few years ago. Not many can hold up for so many years, and what it relates still resonates today.
In this profound ecological fable, a mysterious plague has destroyed the vast majority of the human race. Isherwood Williams, one of the few survivors, returns from a wilderness field trip to discover that civilization has vanished during his absence.
Eventually he returns to San Francisco and encounters a female survivor who becomes his wife. Around them and their children a small community develops, living like their pioneer ancestors, but rebuilding civilization is beyond their resources, and gradually they return to a simpler way of life.
A poignant novel about finding a new normal after the upheaval of a global crisis.
So much of our culture and our fiction comes from taking older stories and ideas and reworking, blending, and adapting them into new forms. This cultural mixture has gifted us with some of the greatest works of English literature, and I’ve always been surprised and delighted to discover what people can pull out of older works and make. It’s why my first novels have followed the theme, and why I will always have time to check out a new story that builds on older ideas to create something new.
Jenna Moran is an under-appreciated author who combines whimsy and darkness in equal measure, created worlds that are at once familiar and strange. This bittersweet picture book is her at her finest, accompanied by glorious artwork by Elizabeth Sherry as she tells the story of a picture-book world attacked by an invasion of terrible, otherworldly things—Ordinary Objects.
Earth is full. Now, when there's a new ordinary thing, it doesn't have anywhere to go. A plague of blankets, chairs, and other horrors unleashes itself upon the picture-book realm. Warning: content is fearsome.
"O.O
that is a very creepy children's book.
O.O" - C.E. Murphy, author of the Walker Papers series, The Negotiator Trilogy, and the Inheritor's Cycle.
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…
As a children’s novelist, I believe there’s nothing more important than showing kids it’s okay to experience emotion. Nothing is more powerful than watching someone rise to the occasion, and showing vulnerability in the process. Plus, middle-grade books are just fun—they let us create these fantastical ways to show very grounded, human needs. Rockets become friendships? Jellyfish offer understanding? Sign me up! It’s my pleasure to recommend these novels to kids everywhere (even the adult ones)!
This book was my childhood favorite, by far. The Girl Who Owned a City is an exploration of life after adults: when every adult suddenly dies, the world is left to their kids… and not everyone will survive. Determined to keep her younger brother alive and the memory of their parents close, Lisa somehow creates a community that becomes a safe haven for miles around. As a main character, Lisa absolutely steals the show; her resourcefulness and grit are unmatched, and stuck with me for years after reading this book. There’s also a graphic novel version, for anyone who prefers that format!
A deadly plague has devastated Earth, killing all the adults.
Lisa and her younger brother Todd are struggling to stay alive in a world where no one is safe. Other children along Grand Avenue need help as well. They band together to find food, shelter, and protection from dangerous gangs invading their neighborhood.
When Tom Logan and his army start making threats, Lisa comes up with a plan and leads her group to a safer place. But how far is she willing to go to protect what's hers?
I am an author fortunate to be alive because of emergency medical treatments I received as an infant, treatments not available to one of my older sisters who died as a result. That I grew up in Rochester Minnesota—home to the world-famous Mayo Clinic where my father worked as a pediatric endocrinologist—also may have increased my awareness of how illness and its medical treatments can affect a young person’s life.
This nonfiction book on tuberculosis, published the same year as my book, begins with the discovery of a skull marked by the scars of tuberculosis. Turns out it belonged to a young man who died over 500,000 years ago from the disease. The authors trace the devastating effects of tuberculosis to modern day when our drugs can no longer fully guarantee treatment. This book tells a fascinating, yet worrisome, story about a most dreaded disease.
"Who knew the biography of a germ could be so fascinating?”—Kirkus (starred review)
This is the story of a killer that has been striking people down for thousands of years: tuberculosis. After centuries of ineffective treatments, the microorganism that causes TB was identified and the cure was thought to be within reach—but drug-resistant varieties continue to plague and panic the human race.
The "biography" of this deadly germ and the social history of an illness that could strike anywhere are woven together in an engrossing, carefully researched narrative. Includes a bibliography, source notes, and index.
We're all in this together: public health for all people, no matter their status or wealth, is one of humanity's great achievements. Favoring reason over faith, science over anecdote, and the group over the individual, has led to lowered infant mortality, improved health, and longer human lifespans. During pandemics, however, evidence and reason are often discarded, as people panic and try to save themselves. The odd human behavior we have seen during the Covid-19 pandemic has multiple precedents in the past. Quack cures, snake-oil sales, conspiracy theories, suspicion of authority, the emergence of cults with eccentric, bizarre, and inexplicable beliefs: again and again, this has been the human response to the unknown.
Cantor’s book showed me that when a lethal pandemic arrives, it can change society in ways that make “returning to normal” impossible, because the conditions that made “normal” possible no longer exist. The Black Death - probably a bubonic plague pandemic - wiped out as much as half of China’s population, before traveling the silk road to Europe where, from 1347-1351, a third of the population died. The pandemic also suffocated the feudal order, created the conditions for capitalism, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, breathed new life into art, and transformed the legal system. In effect, the pandemic plowed the seedbed for the modern Western world. Covid may be a similar epidemiological juggernaut, sweeping away human institutions that we know, leaving us a novel world that will be strange and different in ways we can’t yet imagine.
A New York Times bestseller, In the Wake of the Plague is a fascinating study of the cultural and religious consequences of one of the deadliest tragedies to befall humanity: the black plague. Though rigorously scientific in his approach, Norman F. Cantor has produced an unforgettable narrative that in many ways employs the novelist’s skill for storytelling.
The Black Death was the fourteenth century’s equivalent of a nuclear war. It wiped out one-third of Europe’s population, and irrevocably changed the lives of those who survived. And yet, most of what we know about it is wrong. The details of the…
Internationally recognized mind-body science and design and health pioneer, Esther Sternberg M.D. is Research Director, Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, Inaugural Andrew Weil Chair for Research in Integrative Medicine, Professor of Medicine, Psychology, Architecture, Planning & Landscape Architecture, Founding Director, University of Arizona Institute on Place, Wellbeing & Performance, and Associate Director (Research), Innovations in Healthy Aging. Formerly a National Institutes of Health Senior Scientist and Section Chief, she received the U.S. Federal Government’s highest awards, authored over 235 scholarly articles, and two engaging and popular science-for-the-lay-public books: The Balance Within chronicling mind-body science underpinning stress and illness and belief and wellness, and Healing Spaces, which helped ignite the 21st-century design and health movement.
This book is a gripping story of the year 1666 in which three calamities befell London: the Black Plague, the Anglo-Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London. When I read the book in 2021, I found that we were re-living practically the same events in modern times. I live in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains in Tucson, Arizona, and in the spring of 2020, shortly after the COVID shutdowns, fires ignited by lighting swept through the canyons just north of my home. I found myself in a “get ready” zone of the region’s “Get Ready, Get Set, Go” emergency evacuation plan.
1666 shows the range of people’s responses to extreme and immediate danger: from Samuel Pepys’ quick thinking to get the critical government documents out of harm’s way, all the way to the panic and inability to act of others. All animals show a range of reactions…
1666 was a watershed year for England. The outbreak of the Great Plague, the eruption of the second Dutch War and the Great Fire of London all struck the country in rapid succession and with devastating repercussions.
Shedding light on these dramatic events, historian Rebecca Rideal reveals an unprecedented period of terror and triumph. Based on original archival research and drawing on little-known sources, 1666: Plague, War and Hellfire takes readers on a thrilling journey through a crucial turning point in English history, as seen through the eyes of an extraordinary cast of historical characters.
