2019 Coronavirus

Plagues and pandemics can be just as gripping as they are alarming and each one adds its own special lesson to our collective knowledge. This book takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of history's greatest plagues and, with a bit of dark humor, teases out the most important lessons from each disaster.

Read this book if: You're looking for something a little lighter (but no less gruesome).

It's easier than ever for a virus to travel globally, and recently several interactive maps have been created to track COVID-19's spread. This book tells the story of one man who tracks a huge cholera epidemic in London back to a single water pump handle. Along the way, we learn much about the history of germ theory and the importance of city infrastructure.

Read this book if: You're curious about how human interconnections can lead to (and stop) disease spread.

Part of the danger in pandemics lies not with the microbes causing the disease but with the public handling of the outbreak. This book explores the mistakes made in past public health crises to offer advice about how to avoid future disaster.

Read this book if: You want a first-hand account from a CDC insider about the importance of the human response to emerging pandemic threats.

The so-called "Spanish Flu" has been a constant reference throughout news stories of COVID-19. While medical technology has progressed greatly since 1918, echoes from the pandemic still ring through the world today.

Read this book if: You want to know more about the last, great worldwide pandemic.

COVID-19 is not the first global health crisis the world has seen. Beginning with the enormously disruptive epidemic of cholera, this book explores some of the pathogens that have caused the largest pandemics in history.

Read this book if: You want to know what lessons from the past can prepare us for future pandemics.

Spillover is the name for the phenomenon by which animal viruses cross over into humans. Though the animal source for COVID-19 has not been identified, other coronaviruses such as SARS and MERS were transmitted through contact with animals.

Read this book if: You want to know more about how COVID-19 may have emerged.

This meditation on the nature of humanity begins with an sudden epidemic of blindness that sweeps over the entire population of the unnamed country. As social and moral institutions decline, one eyewitness and the family she assembles demonstrate humanity's incredible resilience.

Read this book if: You are up for a tough read that dives deep in the depravity of social decay that will force you to ask questions about the value of human civilization.

This novel of memory and loss sets up a universe in which those who die continue their afterlife in The City. As long as one living person can remember them, the residents continue their existence. But after a virus sweeps through the living, residents of The City begin disappearing as those who remembered them succumb.

Read this book if: You're looking for a lyrical, melancholy story written by an Arkansas native.

What starts as a medieval time travel novel becomes an emotional historical reflection reminding us that the Black Death was a human tragedy and that the fate of the people of the Middle Ages is not so disconnected from our fate as we would like to think.

Read this book if: You want a well-researched novel that represents the human cost of the Black Death.

Technically a work of fiction, this book provides an "eyewitness" account of the Great Plague of London beginning in 1665. Though Defoe was only 5 when the plague swept London, the narrative is full of enough shocking detail to provide a full picture of life during a plague year.

Read this book if: You want to experience the book that has directly influence of many of the other fiction novels in this list.

When a seemingly healthy young woman collapses suddenly on the New York City subway and dies upon reaching the hospital, her case is an eerie reminder of the 1918 flu pandemic. Although the facts don't add up to influenza, Dr. Jack Stapleton must race against the clock to identify the woman and determine what kind of virus could wreak such havoc--a task made more urgent when two other victims succumb to a similar rapid death.

Read this book if: You want a fast-paced, compelling medical thriller.

Told through a time-shifting narrative, this novel tracks the collapse of civilization following a pandemic flu that affects most of the world's population.

Read this book if: You want a novel that encompasses the beauty and terror of humanity, before and after global disaster.