
Plagues, Pandemics and Viruses
From the Plague of Athens to COVID-19
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Narrated by:
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Samara Naeymi
About this listen
COVID-19 and the History of Pandemics and Epidemics
It can come in waves - like tidal waves. It changes societies. It disrupts life. It ends lives. As far back as 3000 B.C.E. (the Bronze Age), plagues have stricken mankind. COVID-19 is just the latest example, but history shows that life continues. It shows that knowledge and social cooperation can save lives.
Viruses are neither alive nor dead and are the closest thing we have to zombies. Their only known function is to replicate themselves, which can have devastating consequences on their hosts. Most, but not all, bacteria are good for us. Some are truly horrific, including those that caused the bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic plagues. And viruses and bacteria are always morphing, evolving, and changing, making them hard to treat. Plagues, Pandemics and Viruses: From the Plague of Athens to COVID-19 is an enlightening, and sometimes frightening, recounting of the destruction wrought by disease, but it also looks at what humanity has done and can do to overcome even the deadliest and bleakest of contagions.
This important book chronicles the history of plagues and pandemics, human resilience, and what we've learned from the past, including:
- The bubonic plague/black plague, which killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population
- The devastation to the indigenous population in the Americas
- How the 1918 Spanish Flu did not come from Spain
- How disease inspired The Canterbury Tales, Wuthering Heights, pop artist Keith Haring, and others
- AIDS patient zero
- The differences between COVID-19 and other coronaviruses
- How climate change will affect future pandemics
- The aftermath of various pandemics
- Several modern diseases making a comeback
- How to stop most epidemics before they can turn into pandemics
- The science of preventative measures and medical interventions
- An exclusive interview with Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the NIAID and much, much more.
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Quite interesting stories but not very deep
- By Samuel Lampa on 08-23-24
By: Carl Zimmer
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Quackery
- A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything
- By: Lydia Kang, Nate Pedersen
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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What won't we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine - yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison - was dosed like Viagra. Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices.
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Computer-generated Narrator. Dated Humour.
- By Nemo on 12-28-18
By: Lydia Kang, and others
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Neuroscience for Dummies, 2nd Edition
- By: Frank Amthor
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Investigating how your senses work, how you move, and how you think and feel, Neuroscience for Dummies, 2nd Edition is your straightforward guide to the most complicated structure known in the universe: the brain. Covering the most recent scientific discoveries and complemented with engaging anecdotes that help bring the information to life, this updated edition offers a compelling and plain-English look at how the brain and nervous system function.
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painful narration
- By heizenberg on 08-10-21
By: Frank Amthor
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Tesla
- Wizard at War: The Genius, the Particle Beam Weapon, and the Pursuit of Power
- By: Marc J. Seifer
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on 40 years of research and a treasure trove of new information, Tesla: Wizard at War provides a comprehensive view of Tesla's discoveries, which continue to influence today's military technology and diplomatic strategies. One of the world's leading Tesla experts, Marc J. Seifer, offers new insight into the brilliant scientist's particle beam weapon (aka the "Death Ray") and explores his military negotiations with pivotal historical figures - including his links to Joseph Stalin, Vannevar Bush, General Andrew McNaughton, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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review from an electrician
- By Ashton Zee on 12-13-21
By: Marc J. Seifer
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The Fate of Rome
- Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire
- By: Kyle Harper
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes listeners from Rome's pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted.
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Interesting and worthwhile
- By B. Coleman on 06-15-19
By: Kyle Harper
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Pathogenesis
- A History of the World in Eight Plagues
- By: Jonathan Kennedy
- Narrated by: Jonathan Kennedy
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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According to the accepted narrative of progress, humans have thrived thanks to their brains and brawn, collectively bending the arc of history. But in this revelatory book, Professor Jonathan Kennedy argues that the myth of human exceptionalism overstates the role that we play in social and political change. Instead, it is the humble microbe that wins wars and topples empires.
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Devolves into political advocacy
- By Mark Fackler on 04-29-23
By: Jonathan Kennedy
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Mutants
- On Genetic Variety and the Human Body
- By: Armand Marie Leroi
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Stepping effortlessly from myth to cutting-edge science, Mutants gives a brilliant narrative account of our genetic code and the captivating people whose bodies have revealed it - a French convent girl who found herself changing sex at puberty; children who, echoing Homer's Cyclops, are born with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads; a village of long-lived Croatian dwarves; one family, whose bodies were entirely covered with hair, was kept at the Burmese royal court for four generations and gave Darwin one of his keenest insights into heredity.
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Fascinating
- By A. Holmes on 11-30-24
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Sparta
- Rise of a Warrior Nation
- By: Philip Matyszak
- Narrated by: Mike Cooper
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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The Spartans of ancient Greece are typically portrayed as macho heroes: noble, laconic, totally fearless, and impervious to pain. And indeed, they often lived up to this image. But life was not as simple as this image suggests. In truth, ancient Sparta was a city of contrasts.
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If
- By Anonymous User on 05-07-25
By: Philip Matyszak
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Doctors from Hell
- The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans
- By: Vivien Spitz
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The author describes the experience of being in bombed-out, dangerous, post-war Nuremberg, where she lived for two years while working on the trial. This landmark trial resulted in the establishment of the Nuremberg Code, which sets the guidelines for medical research involving human beings. Doctors from Hell is a significant addition to the literature on World War II and the Holocaust, medical ethics, human rights, and the barbaric depths to which human beings can descend.
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Not what I expected
- By Anonymous User on 09-03-21
By: Vivien Spitz
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Underworld
- The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
- By: Graham Hancock
- Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 31 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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From Graham Hancock, best-selling author of Fingerprints of the Gods, comes a mesmerizing book that takes us on a captivating underwater voyage to find the ruins of a lost civilization that's been hidden for thousands of years beneath the world's oceans. While Graham Hancock is no stranger to stirring up heated controversy among scientific experts, his books and television documentaries have intrigued millions of people around the world and influenced many to rethink their views about the origins of human civilization.
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Fascinating
- By Michael Beeson on 05-13-19
By: Graham Hancock
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Fungipedia
- A Brief Compendium of Mushroom Lore
- By: Lawrence Millman
- Narrated by: Al Kessel
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Fungipedia presents a delightful A-Z treasury of mushroom lore. With more than 180 entries - on topics as varied as Alice in Wonderland, chestnut blight, medicinal mushrooms, poisonings, Santa Claus, and waxy caps - this collection will transport both general listeners and specialists into the remarkable universe of fungi. Combining ecological, ethnographic, historical, and contemporary knowledge, author and mycologist Lawrence Millman discusses how mushrooms are much more closely related to humans than to plants, how they engage in sex, how insects farm them, and more.
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Performance makes a decent book mediocre
- By Kenichiro on 02-21-23
By: Lawrence Millman
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The Deep Learning Revolution
- By: Terrence J. Sejnowski
- Narrated by: Shawn Compton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The deep-learning revolution has brought us driverless cars, the greatly improved Google Translate, fluent conversations with Siri and Alexa, and enormous profits from automated trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Deep-learning networks can play poker better than professional poker players and defeat a world champion at Go. In this book, Terry Sejnowski explains how deep learning went from being an arcane academic field to a disruptive technology in the information economy.
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Probably the best audio book available on Deep Learning
- By Charlie on 03-01-19
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The Origin of Species
- By: Charles Darwin
- Narrated by: David Case
- Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most famous and influential books of its (or any) time, The Origin of Species is, surprisingly, little read. True enough, most people know what it says, or think they do, at any rate. The first comprehensive statement of the theory of natural selection, it does, indeed, provide the basic argument and demonstration of what we think of as Darwinism.
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Case is tedious
- By Suzanne McGaugh on 03-05-08
By: Charles Darwin
Interesting historical overview
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history was great, present day felt unfinished
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In depth study of how these have affected us
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nice read
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Enlightening!
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Fascinating
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Somewhat elemental
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i guess it could be the narrator who is the issue, but i suspect the book is just poorly written and edited.
so much misinformation
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Some good info but
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