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

erintripsey

Just found this list!! So so interesting! I don’t know if it fits, but The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is all about Ebola

endless_tbr_list

This is perfect, adding!

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.