Press Release

Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Coronaviruses and Beyond By Sonia Shah

 “A superbly written account of how we got here and what might await us.”
–The Economist

A finalist for the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in science andNew York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, science journalist Sonia Shah’s 2016 work Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Coronaviruses and Beyond will be published in India for the first time this September, with a brand-new preface on Covid-19.

Sonia Shah says, “Where do pandemics come from? How do microbes turn into deadly pathogens? These are some of the questions I explore in this book. I hope readers will find insight about our current predicament and possibly even some comfort—because there’s much we can do to prevent pandemics from happening in the first place.”

 Sonal Nerurkar, commissioning editor, HarperCollins India, says, “The question uppermost in all our minds now is, how did we not see this pandemic coming and what lies ahead? With a new preface on Covid-19, Sonia Shah’s Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Coronaviruses and Beyond is such an extensively researched, important and timely read for those of us who need answers. HarperCollins is thrilled to publish this seminal book in India.”

 

Praise for Pandemic

  “Could hardly be more timely… Ms. Shah steers us nimbly along the pandemic path… Ms. Shah has chosen a complex structure for this book…but the strategy pays off; she has succeeded in producing a lively, rigorously researched and highly informative read.” —The Wall Street Journal

“[An] absorbing, complex, and ominous look at the dangers posed by pathogens… Shah’s warning is certainly troubling, and this important medical and social history is worthy of attention—and action.” —Publishers Weekly

“The most provocative — and sci-fi — part of Ms. Shah’s book is not about the ways humans have altered the evolution of pandemics. It’s about the ways pandemics have altered the evolution of humans.” —The New York Times

***

About the Book

Over the past fifty years, more than three hundred infectious diseases have either emerged or re-emerged, appearing in places where they’ve never before been seen. Long before the sudden arrival of COVID-19, ninety percent of epidemiologists predicted that one of them would cause a deadly pandemic sometime in the next two generations: it might be Ebola, avian flu, a drug-resistant superbug, or something completely new, like the novel coronavirus that first reared its head in late 2019.

While it was impossible to foresee which of these pathogens would cause the next global outbreak, scientists had been sounding the alarm for years—and it is only by unraveling the stories of pandemics past that we can prepare for what our future holds in store.

 In Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Coronaviruses and Beyond, Sonia Shah interweaves history, firsthand reporting, and personal narrative to explore the origins of epidemics, drawing parallels between cholera—one of history’s deadliest and most disruptive pathogens—and the new diseases that stalk humankind today, from the MRSA bacterium that besieges her own family to the never-before-seen zoonoses that have emerged from China’s wet markets.

 Delving into the convoluted science, strange politics, and checkered history of the world’s deadliest outbreaks, Pandemic is a work of epidemiological reportage like no other, with urgent lessons for our own time.

 About the Author

 Sonia Shah is a science journalist and the prizewinning author of The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move. Her book The Fever was long listed for the Royal Society’s Winton Prize for Science Books, and Pandemic was named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.

 For further information, please write to sagiri.dixit@harpercollins.co.in
Non-fiction/Public Health | Rs 499

 

 

 

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