Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World's Worst Diseases

From the masters of storytelling-meets-science and co-authors of Quackery, Patient Zero tells the long and fascinating history of disease outbreaks--how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us.

Written in the authors' lively and accessible style, chapters include page-turning medical stories about a particular disease or virus--smallpox, Bubonic plague, polio, HIV--that combine "Patient Zero" narratives, or the human stories behind outbreaks, with historical examinations of missteps, milestones, scientific theories, and more.

Learn the tragic stories of Patient Zeros throughout history, such as Mabalo Lokela, who contracted Ebola while on vacation in 1976, and the Lewis Baby on London's Broad Street, the first to catch cholera in an 1854 outbreak that led to a major medical breakthrough. Interspersed are origin stories of a different sort--how a rye fungus in 1951 turned a small village in France into a phantasmagoric scene reminiscent of Burning Man. Plus the uneasy history of human autopsy, how the HIV virus has been with us for at least a century, and more.

Author: Lydia Kang, Nate Pedersen
Publisher: Workman Publishing
Published: 11/16/2021
Pages: 400
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 8.60h x 6.00w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781523513291


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 09/27/2021
Library Journal 11/01/2021 pg. 102

About the Author
Lydia Kang, MD, is a practicing internal medicine physician and author of young adult fiction and adult fiction. Her YA novels include Control, Catalyst, and the upcoming The November Girl. Her adult fiction debut is entitled A Beautiful Poison. Her nonfiction has been published in JAMA, the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

This author is represented by the Hachette Speakers Bureau.
Nate Pedersen is a librarian, historian, and freelance journalist with over 400 publications in print and online, including in the Guardian, the Believer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Art of Manliness.