"Dune's mother is patient zero of a mysterious illness that stops people in their tracks -- in mid-sentence, mid-action, mid-life -- casting them into a nonresponsive state from which no one recovers. Dune must navigate poverty and the loss of her mother as Detroit's hospitals, morgues, and graveyards begin to overflow. As the quarantined city slowly empties of life, she investigates what caused the plague, and what might end it, following in the...

"This book delves into several illnesses that have infected humans and affected civilizations. Each chapter explores the history of a specific disease, detailing the symptoms, cures, and medical breakthroughs that it spawned"--

"In 1793, the interim capital city of Philadelphia was struck by a mysterious malady that ended up killing at least one-tenth of the population, prompting an evacuation, and shutting down the nascent federal government, resulting in shocking parallels to recent pandemics and offering important political lessons"--

"During those dark pre-antibiotic days, when tuberculosis killed one in seven people, white nurses at Sea View, New York's largest municipal hospital, began quitting. Desperate to avert a public health crisis, city officials summoned Black southern nurses, luring them with promises of good pay, a career, and an escape from the strictures of Jim Crow. But after arriving, they found themselves on an isolated hilltop in the remote borough of Staten Island,...