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Dread

How Fear and Fantasy Have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to Avian Flu

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Dread

By: Phillip Alcabes
Narrated by: Simon Prebble
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About this listen

 The average individual is far more likely to die in a car accident than from a communicable disease...yet we are still much more fearful of an epidemic. Even at our most level-headed, the thought of an epidemic can inspire terror. As Philip Alcabes persuasively argues in Dread, our anxieties about epidemics are created not so much by the germ or microbe in question - or the actual risks of contagion - but by the unknown, the undesirable, and the misunderstood.

Alcabes examines epidemics through history to show how they reflect the particular social and cultural anxieties of their times. From Typhoid Mary to bioterrorism, as new outbreaks are unleashed or imagined, new fears surface, new enemies are born, and new behaviors emerge. Dread dissects the fascinating story of the imagined epidemic: the one that we think is happening, or might happen; the one that disguises moral judgments and political agendas; the one that ultimately expresses our deepest fears.

©2009 Philip Alcabes (P)2009 Audible, Inc. Contagious Diseases History & Commentary Medicine & Health Care Industry Physical Illness & Disease World Health Medicine Social justice Middle Ages

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Critic reviews

"Showing how even epidemics hinge on societal attitudes and expectations, Alcabes presents an engrossing, revealing account of the relationship between progress and plague." (Publishers Weekly)
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