Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond

Over the past 50 years, more than 300 infectious diseases have emerged for the first time or reappeared in new territories. Experts around the world are preparing intensely for a devastating, deadly epidemic.

In the book “Pandemic,” prizewinning science journalist Sonya Shah shows how it might happen, drawing parallels between cholera—one of the most dangerous and frightening pathogens in the world—and new diseases that are lurking to strike us today. Describing the stages of cholera’s dramatic march—from an harmless microbe to a pandemic capable of changing the world—Shah tells about the pathogens that follow in its wake: starting with the MRSA bacterium that struck her own family, and moving on to new, unprecedented killers appearing on Chinese food markets, in hospital surgical wards in Delhi, in the slums of Port-au-Prince, and on the outskirts of Eastern coastal cities. The picture is both impressive and alarming. The book deeply explores the questions of complex science, strange politics, and the tangled history behind one of the scariest diseases in the world—warning about a possible future that cannot be ignored.