View our feature on Jeff Carlson’s Plague Zone. After surviving the machine plague and the world war that followed, nanotech researcher Ruth Goldman and ex-army ranger Cam Najarro discovered that a new contagion is about to be unleashed. Read Jeff Carlson's blogs and other content on the Penguin Community.
The veteran Wall Street Journal science reporter Marilyn Chase’s fascinating account of an outbreak of bubonic plague in late Victorian San Francisco is a real-life thriller that resonates in today’s headlines. The Barbary Plague transports us to the Gold Rush boomtown in 1900, at the end of the city’s Gilded Age. With a deep understanding of the effects on public health of politics, race, and geography, Chase shows how one city triumphed over perhaps the most frightening and deadly of all scourges.
For the past four decades, a rich scholarship has investigated the emergence of the prison in Europe and North America, mainly the connection between institutional architecture, techniques of social control, and mechanisms of discipline. Prison Architecture and Punishment in Colonial Senegal asks if these connections did exist in colonial Senegal since prisons in Africa had never been the focus of such scholarship. This book addresses three main themes. First, it analyzes prison buildings and their changing architectural forms throughout the colonial period to highlight how the French used prison architecture to control Africans. Second, it describes the connections between the internal layout of prison spaces and punishment to show how the design of prisons expressed the notions of punishment and reforms. The book also undertakes a critical assessment of inmates’ agency in reshaping the world of prisons in colonial Senegal. Finally, it discusses the legacy of colonial prisons in independent Senegal. By providing a comprehensive history of prison architecture in Senegal, the book helps insert Africa into a more global history by offering a uniquely comparative study of colonialism, architecture, and punishment.
This book is about how Bubonic Plague arrived and spread through parts of Australia in the period 1900-1925. In particular it concentrates on the epidemic of Plague which affected Sydney in 1900 and in the following years. The book examines the impact of Plague on Sydney’s population and in particular how medical and governmental authorities struggled to come to grips with what Plague really was and how it spread. Without any doubt the Plague epidemic that broke out in Sydney in 1900 was the most devastating and traumatic event in Australia’s 19th Century history and the greatest social disaster to affect Australia’s population. The book explores the impact that Plague had on ordinary people and how they behaved and reacted during the epidemic crisis. At a public level this outbreak of Plague produced some of the greatest scenes of fear, hysteria and panic ever seen in Australia. The book also delves into how Government and Medical officials fought among themselves re how best to control the pandemic and stop in spreading. Plague also produced some extraordinary scenes of finding someone to blame. Neighbour turned on neighbour and people blamed the Chinese and other immigrant communities for introducing and spreading the disease.
With a New Chapter and Updated Epilogue on Coronavirus A Financial Times Best Health Book of 2019 and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice "Honigsbaum does a superb job covering a century’s worth of pandemics and the fears they invariably unleash." —Howard Markel, MD, PhD, director of the Center for the History of Medicine, University of Michigan How can we understand the COVID-19 pandemic? Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing such catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. In The Pandemic Century, a lively account of scares both infamous and less known, medical historian Mark Honigsbaum combines reportage with the history of science and medical sociology to artfully reconstruct epidemiological mysteries and the ecology of infectious diseases. We meet dedicated disease detectives, obstructive or incompetent public health officials, and brilliant scientists often blinded by their own knowledge of bacteria and viruses—and see how fear of disease often exacerbates racial, religious, and ethnic tensions. Now updated with a new chapter and epilogue.
Bookish and proper Percival Tunstell finds himself out of his depth when floating cities, spirited plumbing, and soggy biscuits collide in this delightful conclusion to NYT bestselling author Gail Carriger's Custard Protocol series. Percival Tunstell loves that his sister and her best friend are building themselves a family of misfits aboard their airship, the Spotted Custard. Of course, he'd never admit that he belongs among them. He's always been on the outside - dispassionate, aloof, and hatless. But accidental spies, a trip to Japan, and one smart and beautiful doctor may have him renegotiating his whole philosophy on life. Except hats. He's done with hats. Thank you very much. Custard ProtocolPrudenceImprudenceCompetenceReticence For more from Gail Carriger, check out: Parasol ProtectorateSoullessChangelessBlamelessHeartlessTimeless
Filled with many examples of topic issues and current events, this book develops a basic understanding of how the natural world works and of how humans interact with the planet's natural ecosystems. It covers the history of ecology and describes the general approaches of the scientific method, then takes a look at basic principles of population dynamics and applies them to everyday practical problems.
A magnificent city existing on the ringes of the past, and on the brink of destruction, Viriconium • With a foreword by Neil Gaiman Available to American readers for the first time, this landmark collection gathers four groundbreaking fantasy classics from the acclaimed author of Light. Set in the imagined city of Viriconium, here are the masterworks that revolutionized a genre and enthralled a generation of readers: The Pastel City, A Storm of Wings, In Viriconium, and Viriconium Nights. Back in print after a long absence, these singular tales of a timeless realm and its enigmatic inhabitants are now reborn and compiled to captivate a whole new generation. Praise for M. John Harrison’s Viriconium “The world that Harrison depicts is intricate and authentic, peopled with a multitude of strange yet lifelike characters—a combination which serves to make his richly imagined empire of Viriconium feel very real indeed. . . . This omnibus collection from the author of Light is canon-reading for those who wish to know the genre's roots, as well as the heights, to which it can aspire.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Brilliant, beautiful, and absolutely essential reading. The breadth of vision and imagination alone in these books is unparalleled. It is truly one of a kind and will continue to haunt you in the best possible way for years.”—Jonathan Carroll, author of White Apples “Harrison’s Viriconium sequence is the jewel in the crown of 20th-century fantasy, a work that proves irrefutably that fantastic literature can be Art with a capital A, holding its own alongside the very finest writing of our time, or any other.”—Elizabeth Hand, author of Mortal Love “M. John Harrison is a true master of English prose. He possesses the eye of a painter, the ear of a bard, and a rigorous and playful intellect. The Viriconium novels and stories are infused with a haunting genius that never falters.”—K.J. Bishop, author of The Etched City