
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
The COVID-19 pandemic won't be our lastābecause what makes us vulnerable to pandemics also makes us human. That is the uncomfortable but all-too-timely message of The Human Disease, which travels through history and around the globe to examine how and why pandemics are an inescapable threat of our own making. Drawing on dozens of disciplinesāfrom medicine, epidemiology, and microbiology to anthropology, sociology, ecology, and neuroscienceāas well as a unique expertise in public education about pandemic risks, biological anthropologist Sabrina Sholts identifies the human traits and tendencies that double as pandemic liabilities, from the anatomy that defines us to the misperceptions that divide us.
Weaving together a wealth of personal experiences, scientific findings, and historical stories, Sholts brings dramatic and much-needed clarity to one of the most profound challenges we face as a species. Though the COVID-19 pandemic looms large in Sholts's account, it is, in fact, just one of the many infectious disease events explored in The Human Disease. With its expansive, evolutionary perspective, the book explains how humanity will continue to face new pandemics because humans cause them, by the ways that we are and the things that we do. By recognizing our risks, Sholts suggests, we can take actions to reduce them. When the next pandemic happens, and how bad it becomes, are largely within our highly capable human handsāand will be determined by what we do with our extraordinary human brains.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Contents
- Foreword
- Prologue: An Empty Museum
- 1āHomo sapiens: The Evolutionary Upstart
- 2āThe Human Body: A Perfect Host
- 3āPermanent Residents: Setting the Stage
- 4āCultural Transmission: Sharing Is Caring
- 5āPeople Power: Domination and Disease
- 6āForeign Foes
- 7āDiseased Deviants
- 8āDistrusted Authorities
- 9āLoss of Liberties
- 10āMass Misinformation
- Conclusion: Being Human
- Epilogue: A Museum Changed
- Acknowledgments
- Readersā Guide
- Notes
- Index