6 Essential Nonfiction Accounts of Past Pandemics

The 1918 influenza pandemic is among one of the deadliest in history. More than a quarter of the world’s population contracted this strain of flu during World War I, and more people ended up killed by the flu than by fighting on the battlefield. Could an infectious disease wreak such calamity in this day and age? “Flu” will give you the necessary perspective on this possibility.

Malaria has plagued humanity for thousands of years, and continues to be a huge threat in some parts of the world. “Sonia Shah’s tour-de-force history of malaria will convince you that the real soundtrack to our collective fate … is the syncopated whine-slap, whine-slap of man and mosquito duking it out over the eons,” according to The New York Times.

Smallpox was a deadly foe during the American Revolution for all parties battling over the colonies, and it affected the trajectory of that war drastically, according to historian Elizabeth Fenn. This is a new look at the founding of a nation and how disease had far-reaching political consequences.