Includes bibliographical references and index.

#ListenToWomen: Smallpox, vaccines, and the world before germs (1721) -- Risky business: The question of keeping nations thriving while people die (1722) -- Let's stick together: How cholera shaped the way we understand community (1832, 1848, and 1854) -- Wash your hands: Sanitation campaigns throughout history (ca. 1845-1875) -- Germs, germs everywhere: How discovering bacteria saved humanity--and how it might destroy us (1875-1901) -- Interlude: The anti-chapter -- Desperate remedies and dangerous cures throughout history: How risk aversion paradoxically leads to risky behaviors (1875-1901) -- An ethics debate for the ages: American individualism and the dilemma of the healthy carrier (1906) -- The kids are not all right: When diseases like the 1918 influenza pandemic take the young (1918) -- The great social leveler: How STDs called privilege's bluff (and how the new coronavirus will call ours, too) (1885 and 1985) -- The hot zone: How one author launched an ebola fear campaign that still hinders pandemic containment today (1994) -- Conclusion: COVID-19's darkest timeline (and how to reverse course).

"Throughout history, there have been numerous epidemics that have threatened mankind with destruction. Diseases have the ability to highlight our shared concerns across the ages, affecting every social divide from national boundaries, economic categories, racial divisions, and beyond. Whether looking at smallpox, HIV, Ebola, or COVID-19 outbreaks, we see the same conversations arising as society struggles with the all-encompassing question: What do we do now? Quarantine Life from Cholera to COVID-19 demonstrates that these conversations have always involved the same questions of individual liberties versus the common good, debates about rushing new and untested treatments, considerations of whether quarantines are effective to begin with, what to do about healthy carriers, and how to keep trade circulating when society shuts down. This immensely readable social and medical history tracks different diseases and outlines their trajectory, what they meant for society, and societal questions each disease brought up, along with practical takeaways we can apply to current and future pandemics--so we can all be better prepared for whatever life throws our way."--Amazon.com.