Viruses, Plagues, and History
Past, Present, and Future
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Narrated by:
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L.J. Ganser
About this listen
The story of viruses and humanity is a story of fear and ignorance, of grief and heartbreak, and of great bravery and sacrifice. Michael Oldstone tells all these stories as he illuminates the history of the devastating diseases that have tormented humanity, focusing mostly on the most famous viruses.
Oldstone begins with smallpox, polio, and measles. Nearly 300 million people were killed by smallpox in this century alone and the author presents a vivid account of the long campaign to eradicate this lethal killer. Oldstone then describes the fascinating viruses that have captured headlines in more recent years: Ebola, Hantavirus, mad cow disease (a frightening illness made worse by government mishandling and secrecy), and, of course, AIDS. And he tells us of the many scientists watching and waiting even now for the next great plague, monitoring influenza strains to see whether the deadly variant from 1918 - a viral strain that killed over 20 million people in 1918-1919 - will make a comeback. For this revised edition, Oldstone includes discussions of new viruses like SARS, bird flu, virally caused cancers, chronic wasting disease, and West Nile.
Viruses, Plagues, and History paints a sweeping portrait of humanity's long-standing conflict with our unseen viral enemies. Oldstone's book is a vivid history of a fascinating field, and a highly reliable dispatch from an eminent researcher on the front line of this ongoing campaign.
©2010 Michael B. A. Oldstone (P)2018 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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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.
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Somewhat elemental
- By Bertha Watkins on 10-23-21
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The Moth in the Iron Lung
- A Biography of Polio
- By: Forrest Maready
- Narrated by: Forrest Maready
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A fascinating account of the world’s most famous disease - polio - told as you have never heard it before. Epidemics of paralysis began to rage in the early 1900s, seemingly out of nowhere. Doctors, parents, and health officials were at a loss to explain why this formerly unheard-of disease began paralyzing so many children. Why did this disease start to become such a horrible problem during the late 1800s? Why did it affect children more often than adults? Why was it originally called teething paralysis by mothers and their doctors?
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Root Cause
- By Circlekay1 Gulfport MS on 10-24-19
By: Forrest Maready
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The Language of Life
- DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine
- By: Francis S. Collins
- Narrated by: Greg Itzin
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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A scientific and medical revolution has crept up on us, based on study after study, from hundreds of laboratories around the world. It is no longer just a theoretical shift: every one of us will be touched by it, and many of us already have been. The meaning of disease, our understanding of the human body, and crucial decisions about what we all need to know and what choices we make about our health are at stake. Welcome to the new world of personalized medicine.
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The future of medicine
- By Ronald E on 04-12-10
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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 Emperor of All Maladies
- A Biography of Cancer
- By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 22 hrs and 18 mins
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The Emperor of All Maladies reveals the many faces of an iconic, shape-shifting disease that is the defining plague of our generation. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance but also of hubris, arrogance, paternalism, and misperception, all leveraged against a disease that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out "war against cancer".
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Incredible
- By S.R.E. on 03-02-16
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Seven Modern Plagues
- And How We Are Causing Them
- By: Mark Jerome Walter
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
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According to veterinarian and journalist Mark Walters, we are contributing to - if not overtly causing - some of the scariest epidemics of our time. Through human stories and cutting-edge science, Walters explores the origins of seven diseases: Mad Cow Disease, HIV/AIDS, Salmonella DT104, Lyme Disease, Hantavirus, West Nile, and new strains of flu. He shows that they originate from manipulation of the environment, from emitting carbon and clear-cutting forests to feeding naturally herbivorous cows “recycled animal protein.”
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Frightening, truthful and a real eye opener
- By RobJD on 02-23-15
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Pale Rider
- The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World
- By: Laura Spinney
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
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In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus travelled across the globe, exposing mankind's vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. As socially significant as both world wars, the Spanish flu dramatically disrupted - and often permanently altered - global politics, race relations, and family structures while spurring innovation in medicine, religion, and the arts.
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A Predilection for Those in the Prime of Life
- By Cynthia on 02-12-18
By: Laura Spinney
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Medical Apartheid
- The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
- By: Harriet A. Washington
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
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Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge - a tradition that continues today within some black populations.
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Sobering... but necessary.
- By Dr. Pepper on 10-27-16
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A Short History of Medicine
- Modern Library Chronicles
- By: Frank Gonzalez-Crussi
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
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Praised for his erudite writing, renowned scientist Frank Gonzalez-Crussi penned this concise history of medicine, beginning with the most primitive health-care practices and ending with the technology of modern medicine that we enjoy today. As with all Modern Library Chronicles, A Short History of Medicine is a wonderful primer for anyone interested in the subject.
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Dull and Disorganized
- By Amazon Customer on 05-21-08
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A Crack in Creation
- Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution
- By: Jennifer A. Doudna, Samuel H. Sternberg
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
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Not since the atomic bomb has a technology so alarmed its inventors that they warned the world about its use. Not, that is, until the spring of 2015, when biologist Jennifer Doudna called for a worldwide moratorium on the use of the new gene-editing tool CRISPR - a revolutionary new technology that she helped create - to make heritable changes in human embryos.
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In to the abyss we ascend, a scary future
- By Philomath on 06-17-17
By: Jennifer A. Doudna, and others
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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
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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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Evolving Ourselves
- How Unnatural Selection and Nonrandom Mutation are Changing Life on Earth
- By: Juan Enriquez, Steve Gullans
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
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Why are conditions like autism, asthma, obesity, and allergies exploding at unprecedented rates? Why are we living longer, getting smarter, having far fewer kids? If Darwin were alive today, how would he explain this new world?
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fascinating ideas and science
- By Joel on 07-04-15
By: Juan Enriquez, and others
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Great book!
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Look beyond the abstract dates and figures, kings and queens, and battles and wars that make up so many historical accounts. Over the course of 48 richly detailed lectures, Professor Garland covers the breadth and depth of human history from the perspective of the so-called ordinary people, from its earliest beginnings through the Middle Ages.
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Tantalizing time trip
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Norman Davies captures it all - the rise and fall of Rome, the sweeping invasions of Alaric and Atilla, the Norman Conquests, the Papal struggles for power, the Renaissance and the Reformation, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Europe's rise to become the powerhouse of the world, and its eclipse in our own century, following two devastating World Wars.
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My Favorite Historian
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What listeners say about Viruses, Plagues, and History
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Lori Barr
- 12-13-20
Great read even if you're not a scientist.
Great narration. I feared this book would be to complicated for a lay person. I skipped through a couple of chapters at the beginning that were heavy on virology. I was more interested in the impact of viruses on people and how viruses were conquered --or not. This book did that wonderfully. Also it was very informative on the people who studied diseases and who have worked to relieve human suffering. We do need science.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Dan
- 05-31-20
Informative
I read this book in weeks 8-10 of my COVID-19 Stay-at-Home order. I wish I'd have read it even sooner. The information in this book helped me to better understand and rationalize the history of virology and our response to viruses throughout history. A great book for this period of time.
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1 person found this helpful
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- OkazakiFrag
- 05-21-19
Must Read on Virology and Public Health
This is a great book that brings a slightly different perspective on virology and infectious diseases. I can see how some readers, albeit erroneously, may believe that the author has American ethnocentrism but it is incorrect to say the very least. US authorities are cited as being as big a part of the problem of emerging diseases as any other country. The book spends an adequate amount of time discussing virology and immunology, but spends the most important, and different than other books on the topic, time discussing implications on religion, politics and financial interests as playing a major role is infectious disease. I found the most interesting part of the book is discussing American outbreaks of diseases such as yellow fever that may have fallen through the cracks in understanding such diseases. It may be a bit technical at times, but this is minimal and the author does a great job of explaining terms when necessary. A general understanding of microbiology and disease is helpful but not necessary. Medical professionals may find this book more interesting than the layperson is small areas but is helpful for all those concerned with the past, present and future of the health of the global community.
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22 people found this helpful
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- Joshua Hargrove
- 04-02-22
Good, if heavy
interesting and, well, not quite "enjoyable" due to the subject, but something like that. A little technical regarding biology, but not so much that it lost me in the details.
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- Louis Macareo
- 06-02-19
Good enough to educate
I have been listening to books like this in order to gauge the difficulty I would have in writing a similar book. The presentation here is sufficient and reasonable in depth, but often is presebted in a voice of what sounds like someone with a PhD (no offense) and not like someone with a facility in explaining scientific concepts. If you basically already understand what he's talking about then you can understand this presentation, but if you don't he seems to miss the ability to translate science into english. I do not suggest however that I could accomplish a superior effort so i want to congratulate him on a well-researched and technically accurate book .
What I have written above notwithstanding, the author through a series of chapters devoted to specific disease entities such as chikungunya, yellow fever, poliomyelitis, measles, HIV, influenza and others, does make a very strong case for two very important concepts that I would like to not leave unmentioned.
The first is the role of serendipity in the discovery process. Science is a conglomeration of many things happening at the same time and discoveries in everything from fluid dynamics and plastics and nuclear physics combine in often accidental ways and build upon each other in a way that makes a discovery possible that was not possible before, but no more likely except for the hodge podge of a vast array of researchers sloppily pursuing different aims. On more than one occasion, an accidental or serendipitous discovery in one area influenced another which was supported by several other peripheral advancements. This argues strongly in favor of diverse, aggressive and courageous funding of a variety of science, because it's very difficult to predict where the next discovery or breakthrough will come from.
Secondly, another important factor and the pursuit of science and world health is the horrendous and inexcusable history played by primarily RELIGION, followed by politics and big moneyed interests from cattle farmers to exporters in the obfiscation of scientific inquiry, distraction and hysteria and the impeding of progress. The pursuit of money will not go away, nor will the unabashed pursuit of souls for one silly god or another. These forces together have made decisions and said things and have impacted our perception of the ill and public policy in a way that has led to countless millions of deaths over the centuries. The disappointing thing is that with each and every disease, the same voices rise up to block aggressively addressing the problem. Nationalists want their own assays used so they can make money, politicians don't want their country to get a bad name an religion . . . religion cannot resist the urge to label every disease as a scourge from god, everyone infected as a sinner and every treatment as against god's will. It is petty and exhausting and almost always gives way to sanity (eventually they back away from and forget their original objects and statements) but it confuses things and slows down recognition of disease. I don't want to rob people of their collective dellusions but these beliefs must be kept in its box and not allowed to impact public health policy.
One thing is certain. viruses will continue to stalk humans and it is only science as a candle in the darkness that can find the answers to push back against his never-ending struggle against biology. If you want a bright future then every effort should be made to fund, support and believe in science.
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22 people found this helpful
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- Fred
- 05-03-20
C-19 is not really "unprecidented"
I learned a lot about how frequent these kind of events happen in human history. Makes me question all history that does not include the affects of diseases on the outcome. Good book, well written, not written to scare, but more to inform.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-13-20
an eye opener for today
A real eye opener! It puts the events of today into perspective and shows the dangers of failing to learn from history.
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- GTURCIOS
- 06-08-23
Impressive..!
After the recent pandemic, everyone should be interested in the preparation to stop future attacks by still unknown viruses .
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- wiworker
- 06-06-23
very informative!
I really enjoyed not only learning about the different infections, but I really liked the linking into historical events and influences. like with the Louisiana purchase.
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- 🌈☮️ MICHÆL IRVINE ❤️
- 02-26-20
INCREDIBLY ENLIGHTENING
Here is a AudioEbook (Audible) which practically everyone should both listen to and also study carefully, in its printed form too. Simply put, this opus contains vital information which even the well read autodidact and also formally college-educated, need to be well aware of, save for those few whom are cutting-edge medical professionals, well schooled and whom keep up with the field of emerging diseases.
Keep in mind that ignorance is far from Bliss. Rather, what one doesn’t know, may indeed kill you. Moreover, the wisdom contained herein this well-researched book, only makes more clear how the right kind of knowledge — and thinking like a skeptical scientist — may serve to keep one from being bamboozled by omnipresent clever Sophistry of pop “experts” in medicine. (Knowledge is power.)
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12 people found this helpful