Expanded from a touring exhibition originated at Para Site in 2013, this book critically analyzes historical and contemporary imaginations and politics of fear in the face of disease and the specter of contamination in society and culture. Scholars, artists, novelists, and journalists depart from Hong Kong's history of epidemic--the most recent being the SARS outbreak of 2003, shortly followed by the tragic death of pan-Asian pop icon Leslie Cheung, and tackle the galvanizing power and the varied perceptions of contagion in the context of lingering histories, myths, anxieties, and memories across geographies. While composing a complex picture of the Hong Kong psyche, these contributions speak from a humanistic and global perspective, pointing to the intersections of urban environments and post-colonial psychology, popular culture and racism, public health and migration, national identity and art. Copublished with Para Site, Hong Kong Contributors Michael Berry, Natalia S. H. Chan, Cosmin Costinas, Dung Kai-cheung, Inti Guerrero, James T. Hong, Austin Ming-han Hsu, Zuni Icosahedron, Finnouala McHugh, Pak Sheung Chuen, Lawrence Pun, Shih Shu-ching, Xiaoyu Weng

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Looming Tower, and the pandemic novel The End of October: an unprecedented, momentous account of Covid-19—its origins, its wide-ranging repercussions, and the ongoing global fight to contain it "A book of panoramic breadth ... managing to surprise us about even those episodes we … thought we knew well … [With] lively exchanges about spike proteins and nonpharmaceutical interventions and disease waves, Wright’s storytelling dexterity makes all this come alive.” —The New York Times Book Review From the fateful first moments of the outbreak in China to the storming of the U.S. Capitol to the extraordinary vaccine rollout, Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year tells the story of Covid-19 in authoritative, galvanizing detail and with the full drama of events on both a global and intimate scale, illuminating the medical, economic, political, and social ramifications of the pandemic. Wright takes us inside the CDC, where a first round of faulty test kits lost America precious time . . . inside the halls of the White House, where Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger’s early alarm about the virus was met with confounding and drastically costly skepticism . . . into a Covid ward in a Charlottesville hospital, with an idealistic young woman doctor from the town of Little Africa, South Carolina . . . into the precincts of prediction specialists at Goldman Sachs . . . into Broadway’s darkened theaters and Austin’s struggling music venues . . . inside the human body, diving deep into the science of how the virus and vaccines function—with an eye-opening detour into the history of vaccination and of the modern anti-vaccination movement. And in this full accounting, Wright makes clear that the medical professionals around the country who’ve risked their lives to fight the virus reveal and embody an America in all its vulnerability, courage, and potential. In turns steely-eyed, sympathetic, infuriated, unexpectedly comical, and always precise, Lawrence Wright is a formidable guide, slicing through the dense fog of misinformation to give us a 360-degree portrait of the catastrophe we thought we knew.

Rumors that plague had entered Barcelona's poorest quarter started circulating shortly after the New Year of 1651, but local officials hesitated to impose a full quarantine on the city. Within months the number of sick in the pesthouse had swelled to 4,000, and thousands more had fled the city. By the time the plague abated in September, at least 15,000 Barcelonans had died. This book is a translation of the 1651 journal of Miquel Parets, a Barcelona tanner who set out, like the protagonist of Camus' The Plague, "to state quite simply what we learn in a time of pestilence." His journal is rich with the details of life during the epidemic, including accounts of prisoners who escaped from jail by claiming they had the disease; of priests hearing confessions with a torch held between them and the sick to avoid contagion; and of people desperately seeking wetnurses for children after their mothers had died. Unlike other accounts, which depict local authorities as the bulwark of enlightened authority amid a sea of popular superstition, Parets accuses the local elite of negligence, selfishness, and abuse of authority during the contagion. His journal is notable both for its non-elite perspective and for its emotional quality--especially in the moving passage wherein the tanner recounts the death of his wife and three of their children. Amelang introduces the journal, illustrating the unique place of the work in the plague literature, and supplies notes and commentaries that clarify the historical context for the contemporary reader. Also included is a helpful appendix of excerpts from other popular plague texts.

This Norton Critical Edition of one of Defoe's most important works reprints the 1722 text, the only edition published in Defoe's lifetime.

It's 2001 and zombies have taken over Tom's town. Meth zombies. The drug rips through Blackwater, PA, with a ferocity and a velocity that overwhelms everyone. It starts small, with petty thefts of cleaning supplies and Sudafed from the supermarket where Tom works. But by year's end there will be ruined, hollow people on every street corner. Meth will unmake the lives of friends and teachers and parents. It will fill the prisons, and the morgues. Tom's always been focused on getting out of his depressing coal mining town, on planning his escape to a college somewhere sunny and far away. But as bits of his childhood erode around him, he finds it's not so easy to let go. With the selfless heroism of the passengers on United Flight 93 that crashed nearby fresh in his mind and in his heart, Tom begins to see some reasons to stay, to see that even lost causes can be worth fighting for. Edward Bloor has created a searing portrait of a place and a family and a boy who survive a harrowing plague year, and become stronger than before.