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Audiobooks for an Epidemic on Hoopla
Human beings have been facing down epidemics for as long as we've been human. These audiobooks make for engrossing listening as they recount episodes in the ongoing struggle of people against plagues. All are available for immediate download on the Hoopla website or app.
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The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic That Shaped Our History
2006 by Crosby, Molly CaldwellGet this itemOur nation is no stranger to terrifying epidemics as this vividly written history makes clear. Molly Caldwell Crosby so powerfully describes the yellow fever epidemic of 1878 that you'll be astonished it isn't remembered as one of the United State's worst natural disasters.
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Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped Our History
2007 by Crawford, Dorothy H.Get this itemIf you're looking for a cogent, no-nonsense, just-the-facts history of humanity's long encounter with deadly microbes, you've found it here. As a bonus, Dorothy Crawford gives the last word to none other than Anthony S. Fauci.
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A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
2011 by W. Tuchman, BarbaraGet this itemThe Black Death along with the Hundred Years War explains why the 14th Century was so calamitous. One of our best popular historians, Barbara Tuchman exceeds her own standards in this monumental portrait of a truly awful era when everything seemed to be going wrong.
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The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic-- and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
2006 by Johnson, StevenGet this itemHere at last is an epidemic book that's a story of success, albeit limited. Steven Johnson shows how one persistent physician's ingenuity foreshadowed modern epidemiology and helped control a microbial killer of thousands.
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The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time
2005 by Kelly, JohnGet this itemThis is the big one, the Black Death or Great Mortality as it was then known. John Kelly describes its march through Europe with frightful vividness. If you want a sense of what it could have possibly been like to live through such times, you won't be disappointed.
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Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
2017 by Diamond, Jared M.Get this itemHere's a highly readable, mind-expanding book that completely deserves its oversize reputation. Jared Diamond provides a fresh look at how geography and the natural world influenced the development of human history, not the least through the ravages of deadly microbes. (Hoopla has only the abridged version of this audiobook. The unabridged version is available on Overdrive/Libby.)
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The Hot Zone
1995 by Preston, RichardGet this itemRichard Preston established himself as the master of the nonfiction biomedical thriller with this terrifying account of the emergence of Ebola virus. No less than Stephen King called it "one of the most horrifying things I've ever read."
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Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe
2007 by Rosen, WilliamGet this itemNo one can accuse the Emperor Justinian of having an uneventful life although nothing compared to the cataclysmic plague that ravaged his realm. William Rosen blends a scientific analysis of the epidemic with lively historical accounts of Justinian, his equally larger-than-life wife Theodora, and his put-upon general Belisarius.
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Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus
2012 by Wasik, BillGet this itemAs this is a cultural history, you get to hear about vampires and zombies as well as viruses. Bill Wasik does a fine job of showing how this dread disease still haunts our imagination though vaccination has greatly diminished its power to harm our bodies.
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