disease, germs, and plagues, oh my!

histories of sickness around the globe - death, destruction, and the fight for cures and eradication

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created by endless_tbr_list

last updated December, 2025

34 books

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The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus

Richard Preston

Deadly Feasts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague

Richard Rhodes

Plagues and Peoples

William H. McNeill

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

Lindsey Fitzharris

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot

The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator

Timothy C. Winegard

The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years

Sonia Shah

On Immunity: An Inoculation

Eula Biss

The Next Pandemic: On the Front Lines Against Humankind's Gravest Dangers

Ali S. Khan

Typhoid Mary

Anthony Bourdain

Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague

David K. Randall

Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything

Lydia Kang

Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World's Worst Diseases

Lydia Kang

The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis

Maria Smilios

The Autumn Ghost: How the Battle Against a Polio Epidemic Revolutionized Modern Medical Care

Hannah Wunsch

The Demon in the Freezer

Richard Preston

Polio: An American Story

David M. Oshinsky

The Masters of Medicine

Andrew Lam

Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond

Sonia Shah

Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come

Richard Preston

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

John Kelly

How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS

David France

Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus

David Quammen

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

David Quammen

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Siddhartha Mukherjee

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

Ed Yong

Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus

Bill Wasik

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

John M. Barry

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

John Green

The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy

Susan Wise Bauer

Comments

marissa

Ah, love this list! I've always had an interest in illnesses over the centuries. I don't know if this suits the vision you're going for, but I recommend Quackery by Lydia Kang!

endless_tbr_list

that's such a interesting read! I think it will fit since it deals with trying to cure sickness (albeit with not great results lol)

polterbooks

I love this list. I cannot read anything on this list but I love it.

kathytrithardt

I still tell people about things I learned in I Contain Multitudes years after reading it.

endless_tbr_list

I love to hear that, it sounds like such an interesting read!

CatherineJ

I would add the book on Lister, The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris, who is essentially the father of modern surgery, revolutionizing horrid Victorian practices that just about killed everyone.