Synopsis

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 the 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.

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review.

According to Alcabes, an essayist and expert in public health, "epidemics fascinate us"; hopeful projection or not, his study provides enough gruesome details and unexpected sidelights to captivate history fans. Looking first at the plague that swept Europe in recurring waves from 1300 to 1700 ("the model for the epidemic"), Alcabes sorts through the widespread confusion over its cause and method of transmission. Rubbing up against theories of "contagion, intemperate air, poisoned water, astrological influence" and "deviltry," accounts of brutal pogroms and apocalyptic dread, Alcabes makes the science behind the history-as in a description of infected fleas regurgitating the plague bacteria into a victim's system-just as gripping. Cholera reached epidemic proportions in England in 1831, when efforts to clean sewage from the streets poisoned the Thames; at the time, experts were focused on foul air, not foul water. Turning to the present, Alcabes chastises the use of "epidemic" for behavioral issues like obesity or teen sex, and the panic over isolated events like the Anthrax outbreak (only 22 cases), while 9 million cases of tuberculosis go untreated every year. Showing how even epidemics hinge on societal attitudes and expectations, Alcabes presents an engrossing, revealing account of the relationship between progress and plague.
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Biography

Philip Alcabes is an Associate Professor of Urban Public Health at Hunter College of the City University of New York and Visiting Clinical Associate Professor at the Yale School of Nursing. He has written op-eds for the Washington Post and contributed essays to The American Scholar, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Virginia Quarterly Review. He lives in the Bronx, New York.