Apollo's Arrow cover art

Apollo's Arrow

The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Apollo's Arrow

By: Nicholas A. Christakis MD PhD MD PhD
Narrated by: Nicholas A. Christakis MD PhD MD PhD
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

A piercing and scientifically grounded look at the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic and how it will change the way we live—"excellent and timely." (The New Yorker)

Apollo's Arrow offers a riveting account of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic as it swept through American society in 2020, and of how the recovery will unfold in the coming years. Drawing on momentous (yet dimly remembered) historical epidemics, contemporary analyses, and cutting-edge research from a range of scientific disciplines, bestselling author, physician, sociologist, and public health expert Nicholas A. Christakis explores what it means to live in a time of plague—an experience that is paradoxically uncommon to the vast majority of humans who are alive, yet deeply fundamental to our species.

Unleashing new divisions in our society as well as opportunities for cooperation, this 21st-century pandemic has upended our lives in ways that will test, but not vanquish, our already frayed collective culture. Featuring new, provocative arguments and vivid examples ranging across medicine, history, sociology, epidemiology, data science, and genetics, Apollo's Arrow envisions what happens when the great force of a deadly germ meets the enduring reality of our evolved social nature.
Biological Sciences Biology Contagious Diseases Physical Illness & Disease Science

Listeners also enjoyed...

Blueprint cover art
Woke Racism cover art
Rebooting AI cover art
The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States cover art
Complexity cover art
The Power of Crisis cover art
The Pattern Seekers cover art
The Spanish Flu cover art
The Price of Panic cover art
Guns, Germs and Steel cover art
Pandemics cover art
The Plague Cycle cover art
Expired cover art
Ten Drugs cover art
The Absent Superpower cover art
Artificial Intelligence cover art

Critic reviews

“Seldom have we been gifted with a study of pandemic disease marked by such scope, wit, and erudition. Still rarer is one that appears while the rest of us scramble to make sense of a rapidly evolving crisis, one shaped by the very social forces that Nicholas Christakis has studied for decades. Apollo’s Arrow is more than history’s first draft. It will live on as a journal of the plague years, certainly, and it inspires as it instructs. Definitive, engaging, and astonishing. A tour-de-force.”—Paul Farmer, Professor, Harvard Medical School, Founder, Partners in Health
“The world is ravenous for deep and accurate information about the most important event in the 21st century. No one is deeper than Nicholas Christakis, who ticks every box of expertise: medical, epidemiological, social, psychological, economic, historical. This is the place to go to understand the phenomenon that has turned the world, and our lives, upside down. Apollo’s Arrow is gripping, enlightening, and vitally important.”—Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now
"In this brilliant and timely book, scientist, scholar, physician, and writer Nicholas Christakis shines the light of history on our dark moment, and illuminates it as no one else can. Insightful, informative, and urgently necessary, Apollo's Arrow is this year's must-must-read."—Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness
“Rich in psychological, sociological, and epidemiological insights, only Nicholas Christakis could write a book this comprehensive and profound and even optimistic during our national calamity."—Amy Cuddy, author of Presence
"Wow, what a feat this is — a fully developed book of extraordinary insight and superb narrative structure that was somehow written in the midst of a live-action recording of events. The journalist in me marvels. The failures Nicholas Christakis captures are so enormously discouraging, infuriating, and tragic. I can only imagine how long this book will be read for reasons beyond the obvious. I burned right through it and highly recommend it.”—Michael Koryta, author of If She Wakes
"Apollo’s Arrow shoots straight and true to explain the scientific and social aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. Christakis’s background in biology, medicine, epidemiology, and sociology is a powerful formula for understanding this complex subject. I’m tempted to say that the gods created Christakis to write this book at this time. It is wise, vivid, and engaging."—William D. Nordhaus, author of The Climate Casino, and 2018 Nobel Laureate in Economics
All stars
Most relevant
Provides a scientific view of the pandemic, along a historical perspective. Better to read than to hear, as I was struggling at some point to follow the numbers

Good book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Just fantastic. Huge sweep and range. Very well read by the author. Magisterial and wise.

Superlative

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Instead listen to pale rider and/or the somewhat dated the end of epidemics.

The author is definitive about vaccine priorities with a wonderfully flawed logic that ignores the most vulnerable and makes assumptions about vaccine that the manufacturers are telling us not to make. He is not an epidemiologist and this is clear from the certainty of his flawed logic on many issues. Still it might take a chunk out of his mortgage and I wish him well.

The book is very US-centric and if this pandemic had thought us anything it is to have a look at what the yanks and Brits are doing and to consider doing the opposite.

Covid-sploitation at it's worst.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.