66 books like The Political Life of an Epidemic

Books that blur the boundaries between political theory and international history are seldom accessible, of pressing contemporary relevance, and beautifully written—but I found this book to be all three.

Reading this outstanding exposé, the book vividly reminded me of the importance of understanding the decades of decolonization in the Black Atlantic as more than a quest for sovereign statehood and recentering the ways in which the likes of Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere imagined new geographies and, indeed, new worlds. I admire the work in many ways—for its geographical sweep, exemplary pace, and conceptual clarity.

By a considerable distance, the most gripping novel I have devoured on gender roles in the long shadow of the loss of home. Several of the book’s characters and defining scenes in the refugee camp remain haunting years after I first encountered them.

Suleiman Addonia’s dissection of the entangled shocks wrought by cultural change, war, and displacement drips with emotional contrasts. This book feels, at times, unbearably intrusive, as the reader is exposed to the most privately held fears and embarrassments of its protagonists.

Simultaneously, the book beautifully underscores how valuable (at least some) intimacy remains for those who feel that the future has already bypassed them.

It is one of the most emotionally challenging reads I have ever read. This book is a bone-chilling dissection of how teachers, peasants, and shopkeepers in apparently peaceful farmlands in Southern Rwanda went from sharing harvests and drinking with their neighbors to becoming their pitiless executioners. “Killing was less wearisome than farming,” one of the protagonists remembers during testimonies that I have wrestled with since first encountering them.

The book is the second installment in Hatzfeld’s trilogy on the Rwandan Genocide and relies almost entirely on interviews with the perpetrators in one community. I find it extraordinarily lucid in explaining how grand ideological narratives around identity politics and history interact with petty grievances and the most recognizable of desires to enable mass murder.

If some books inspire a rethink of recent history through hundreds of pages of forensic evidence or rigorous theory, Emtithal Mahmoud’s poetry recasts big questions that African societies have struggled with by weaving together hard-hitting metaphors and stunning phrases to open up new worlds of possibility and loss.

I find Emi’s writing an incredible call for solidarity, compassion, and the shattering of barriers—whether through the tender or the raw, the unspeakable or the gushing, the blistering and the comforting. A set of poems I return to regularly for perspective, whether on personal dilemmas, the contraptions of unity and division, or the political currency of love and othering.

The Ghost Map is the fantastic story of an important Cholera epidemic in London in 1854.

The book swept me along with its narrative, plunging straight into the fetid world of Victorian London. Johnson weaves together the stories of the people affected, and the desperate hunt by Dr. John Snow to understand the cause of the disease. He also provides fascinating descriptions of the dangers to life in a time before sewers, and the evolution of such systems that ultimately transformed city life.

I definitely look at toilets, pipes, and sewer grates differently after reading this book.

I love adventure stories that offer unexpected challenges in foreign lands. 

This story, set in upper-class England and rural China in the 1920s, is about Kitty, a selfish, beautiful, and attention-seeking woman, and the shy and unattractive English bacteriologist, Walter, who falls hopelessly in love and asks for Kitty’s hand in marriage. Kitty consents, but Walter’s discovery of her lover and the resulting social pressure, force the couple to enter into a marriage doomed for failure. 

Even though bitterness prevails, the couple set off for Walter’s assignment in the cholera-infected area of China. It is an act of suicide, fraught with peril. 

During their dangerous sojourn in this strange and foreign land, the couple’s discoveries are many. In the end, they realize that the greatest discovery is their mutual love.

Charles E. Rosenberg published his book, The Cholera Years, in 1962, and it has remained the classic book on the history of medicine in the 19th century United States. Rosenberg has had a singular impact on the field and has written on many public health topics, but his first book remains my favorite. Cleverly integrating the histories of social change, religion, and the contentious politics of New York City into a richly detailed chronicle of three separate epidemics of cholera, Rosenberg provides a gripping account of how Americans’ responses to public health crises have changed over time.

This is another book that attracted me because of the innumerable contradictions it made me feel.

Horror and fascination; awe and disgust. This dissonance inhabits the art. An exquisitely rendered necrotic leg; the gorgeous color palette of a virulent face. Organized by disease, The Sick Rose is an elegant collection from the golden age of medical illustration. 

Without the need for words, this book is a beautifully disturbing reminder of our mortality and the unresting human desire to try to understand our bodies, cure diseases and extend life.

This book touched many from my generation.

For me, Mary’s abandonment by the adults around her, came close to home. I rooted for her to free her soul. It was the beauty of the garden and the gentle robin that first melted the ice around her heart by connecting her with nature.

Then along came Dickon, who had grown up deeply connected with the earth and inspired her further, and finally Colin, who, like her, had been neglected. They healed each other as they revitalized the garden, experiencing the joys of mother earth.

It reinforced my own faith in mother nature, who also supported me whenever I grappled with my reality. 

This is a very engaging introduction to the history of mapmaking through lively narrated anecdotes, some of which are juicy, such as the persistence of inexistent geographic features (California was mapped as an island for many decades).

I also learned, to my astonishment, that Google has a simple, non-invasive way to know your home address: it is the first address most users look for when they connect to Google Maps!