Description

8vo, hardcover, no jacket ex library labels and stamps. Dread" traces the history of epidemics in Western society from the ancient Greeks to the present day and persuasively argues that our anxieties about outbreaks of disease often stray from the facts to incorporate inflated fears about what is unknown, undesirable, or misunderstood. Fear and imagination help drive the epidemic narrative as much as and, surprisingly, often more than fact." 314 pages. A dustjacket blurb exclaims: "Dread" is an insightful education in how art and science inform each other in a cultural synergy that, even today, keeps us from discerning what is medicine and what is myth. The word 'genius' has been debased by frequent use, but this is a work of undeniable genius in the most exalted sense. What Stephen Jay Gould did for natural history, Philip Alcabes has done for public health.