Dread
How Fear and Fantasy Have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to Avian Flu
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Narrated by:
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Simon Prebble
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By:
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Phillip Alcabes
About this listen
Alcabes examines epidemics through history to show how they reflect the particular social and cultural anxieties of their times. From Typhoid Mary to bioterrorism, as new outbreaks are unleashed or imagined, new fears surface, new enemies are born, and new behaviors emerge. Dread dissects the fascinating story of the imagined epidemic: the one that we think is happening, or might happen; the one that disguises moral judgments and political agendas; the one that ultimately expresses our deepest fears.
©2009 Philip Alcabes (P)2009 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
The Panic Virus is a gripping scientific detective story about how grassroots radicals, snake-oil salesmen, and cynical journalists have perpetrated the biggest health-scare hoax of all time. It explores what happens when the media treats all viewpoints as equally valid, regardless of facts, from parents who are convinced that vaccines caused their children's autism to right-wing radicals who believe that climate change is a myth
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Incredible thorough journey
- By Rachel Dewald on 03-22-11
By: Seth Mnookin
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Crazy Like Us
- The Globalization of the American Psyche
- By: Ethan Watters
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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America has been the world leader in generating new mental health treatments and modern theories of the human psyche. We export our psychopharmaceuticals packaged with the certainty that our biomedical knowledge will relieve the suffering and stigma of mental illness. We categorize disorders, thereby defining mental illness and health, and then parade these seemingly scientific certainties in front of the world.
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He is a reporter...
- By Briana on 05-07-18
By: Ethan Watters
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The Great Influenza
- The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History
- By: John M. Barry
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 19 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the winter of 1918, at the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision between modern science and epidemic disease.
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Great book but very disturbing...
- By Tim on 01-15-09
By: John M. Barry
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The Pandemic Century
- One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris
- By: Mark Honigsbaum
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu to the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 "parrot fever" pandemic, through the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last one hundred years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms.
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Pretty good
- By Baz 12345 on 04-03-20
By: Mark Honigsbaum
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Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic
- By: Richard A. McKay
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In Patient Zero, Richard A. McKay presents a carefully documented and sensitively written account of the life of Gaetan Dugas, a gay man whose skin cancer diagnosis in 1980 took on very different meanings as the HIV/AIDS epidemic developed - and who received widespread posthumous infamy when he was incorrectly identified as patient zero of the North American outbreak.
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A great revisionist history book
- By Maria José Celis on 05-04-23
By: Richard A. McKay
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Influenza
- The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic
- By: Dr. Jeremy Brown
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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On the 100th anniversary of the devastating pandemic of 1918, Jeremy Brown, a veteran ER doctor, explores the troubling, terrifying, and complex history of the flu virus, from the origins of the Great Flu that killed millions, to vexing questions such as: are we prepared for the next epidemic, should you get a flu shot, and how close are we to finding a cure?
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Important read
- By Kathryn C. on 12-21-18
By: Dr. Jeremy Brown
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The Science of Fear
- Why We Fear the Things We Should Not - and Put Ourselves in Great Danger
- By: Daniel Gardner
- Narrated by: Scott Peterson
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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From terror attacks to the War on Terror, bursting real-estate bubbles to crystal meth epidemics, sexual predators to poisonous toys from China, our list of fears seems to be exploding. And yet, we are the safest and healthiest humans in history. Irrational fear is running amok, and often with tragic results. In the months after 9/11, when people decided to drive instead of fly - believing they were avoiding risk - road deaths rose by 1,595. Those lives were lost to fear.
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A rational assessment of the world we live in
- By K Head on 08-29-09
By: Daniel Gardner
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Pandemic
- Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond
- By: Sonia Shah
- Narrated by: Sonia Shah
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Interweaving history, original reportage, and personal narrative, Pandemic explores the origin of epidemics, drawing parallels between the story of cholera - one of history's most disruptive and deadly pathogens - and the new pathogens that stalk humankind today, from Ebola and avian influenza to drug-resistant superbugs.
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You will probably enjoy "Spillover" more
- By serine on 03-01-16
By: Sonia Shah
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Pox
- An American History
- By: Michael Willrich
- Narrated by: K. Todd Freeman
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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At the turn of the last century, a smallpox epidemic swept the United States. The age-old disease spread swiftly through an increasingly interconnected American landscape: from southern plantations to the immigrant neighborhoods of northern cities to far-flung villages on the edges of the American empire. In Pox, historian Michael Willrich offers a gripping chronicle of how the nation's continent-wide fight against smallpox launched one of the most important civil liberties struggles of the 20th century.
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Best book on smallpox
- By Chris M. White on 09-07-21
By: Michael Willrich
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The Secret History of the War on Cancer
- By: Devra Davis Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The War on Cancer was run by leaders of industries that made cancer-causing products and sometimes also profited from drugs and technologies for finding and treating the disease. Filled with compelling personalities and never-before-revealed information, The Secret History of the War on Cancer shows how we began fighting the wrong war, with the wrong weapons, against the wrong enemies, a legacy that persists to this day.
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Silly Book
- By Adam Smith on 12-24-14
What listeners say about Dread
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Scott
- 11-14-14
Informative but dull
Any additional comments?
There are aspects to this audiobook that are much to like. It ably recaps mankind’s fear of and responses to outbreaks of disease and illness along a historical timeline in a sort of Epidemiology 101 primer way. In this respect it is informative without being trivial and will interest listeners with little or no understanding of the topic. In using an expansive definition of “epidemic” to include conditions which arguably are neither illnesses nor necessarily transmittable (e.g. autism, obesity), the author is able to focus more on mankind’s social response to perceived causes and “cures” rather than disease pathology. In this regard, Dread can intrigue by tracing how little our thinking has evolved over the centuries in our need to 1) find a cause for each epidemic and 2) equate that cause with an ethnic, religious, behavioural, or other scapegoat to both fear and blame. Still, I found it difficult to really get into this book. Despite the intriguing title, the writing style is dry and academic, akin to reading a textbook and the professorial tone of the narration brought me back to some of my worst experiences as a University freshman. In the end, this book may be better suited to skimming rather than listening to from start to finish.
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