Non-Fiction November - Week Three

 

Week 3: (Nov. 16 to 20) – Be The Expert/Ask the Expert/Become the Expert (Rennie of What’s Nonfiction): Three ways to join in this week! You can either share 3 or more books on a single topic that you have read and can recommend (be the expert), you can put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you have been dying to read (ask the expert), or you can create your own list of books on a topic that you’d like to read (become the expert).

This is one of my favourite weeks with Non-Fiction November. It's the week my wishlist really explodes!

I've been going through a Plague Lit phase recently. 

It took a while though. 

At the beginning of the Covid lockdown I read about how Albert Camus' classic The Plague (La Peste) had suddenly hit the bestsellers list again in France. I was amused and curious, but as the lockdown restrictions increased, and the virus got upgraded to a pandemic, it all felt too close, too real and too soon. 

But by June/July, the new Covid-normal was starting to feel, well, normal. My reading mojo returned and I found myself becoming obsessed to learn more about how previous generations had survived and thrived during and after a plague event.

I wanted to see if history could teach us some lessons.

It seems, though, that the main lesson history teaches us is that we fail, time and again, to heed the lessons of history!

My list of books is mostly full of fiction titles. I would now like to expand that into non-fiction. I'm particularly interested in learning more about the Spanish Flu of 1918-1920.

I'm hoping to learn more about the Russian Plague of 1770 - 1772 when I read Robert K Massie's book about Catherine the Great, but would be keen for more recommendations.

The Polio outbreak in the US (and elsewhere) is also something I'm curious about (after seeing a fascinating bio about Roosevelt a few years ago). Any Australian books that talk about what happened here during the 30's, 40's and 50's would be of interest.

Live Science, back in March of this year, listed the 20 worst epidemics and pandemics in history. My non-scientific explanation for the difference between a plague and a flu is that a plague is usually caused by a bacterium whereas the flu is viral. Both cross over from animals to humans. The concern right now is that antibiotics work on bacterium but not on viruses and that as we, as humans, encroach on more and more land once the sole domain of animals, more viruses will cross over.

In the list below you will also notice that most flu events last, on average, 2-3 years and that viral flu epidemics have been on the increase over the past 100 years.

1. Prehistoric epidemic: Circa 3000 B.C.
2. Plague of Athens: 430 B.C.
3. Antonine Plague: A.D. 165-180
4. Plague of Cyprian: A.D. 250-271
5. Plague of Justinian: A.D. 541-542
6. The Black Death: 1346-1353
7. Cocoliztli epidemic: 1545-1548
8. American Plagues: 16th century
9. Great Plague of London: 1665-1666
10. Great Plague of Marseille: 1720-1723
11. Russian Plague: 1770-1772
12. Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic: 1793
13. Flu pandemic: 1889-1890
14. American polio epidemic: 1916 - 1956
15. Spanish Flu: 1918-1920
16. Asian Flu: 1957-1958
17. AIDS pandemic and epidemic: 1981-present day
18. H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic: 2009-2010
19. West African Ebola epidemic: 2014-2016
20. Zika Virus epidemic: 2015-present day

My Previous Plague/Pandemic Reads:

• The Plague | Albert Camus
• The Stand | Stephen King
• Moloka'i | Alan Brennert (Leprosy)
• All Fall Down | Sally Nicholls (The Black Death) YA
• Hamnet | Maggie O'Farrell (The Plague)
• Oryx and Crake | Margaret Atwood
• Year of Wonders | Geraldine Brooks (Great Plague of London)
• The Pull of the Stars | Emma Donoghue (Spanish Flu)
• A Journal of the Plague Year | Daniel Defoe (Great Plague of London)
• Intimations | Zadie Smith (non-fiction Covid-19)

My Current Plague Reads:

• A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century | Barbara Tuchman (non-fiction The Black Death)

Up Next:

• Pale Horse, Pale Rider | Katherine Anne Porter (Spanish Flu)

Plague/Pandemic Fiction Books On My Radar:

• Station Eleven | Emily St John Mandel
• Blindness | José Saramago
• The Last Man | Mary Shelley
• Nemesis | Philip Roth (Polio)
• Love in the Time of Cholera | Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Years of Rice and Salt | Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Dog Stars | Peter Heller
• The Pest House | Jim Crace
• The Children’s Hospital | Chris Adrian
• Severance | Ling Ma
• Fever 1793 | Laurie Halse Anderson (Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic) 
• The White Plague | Frank Herbert
• The Passage | Justin Cronin
• Company of Liars | Karen Maitland (The Black Death)
• The Decameron | Giovanni Boccaccio (The Black Death)
• The Decameron Project 2021 | (Covid-19)
• The End of October | Lawrence Wright

Non-Fiction On My Radar:

• The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World | Steven Johnson (Cholera pandemic 1846–1860 - obviously not bad enough to make the top 20 list above!)
• Black Death | Philip Ziegler (The Black Death)

I'm happy to learn about the science around each and every epidemic, pandemic or plague, but I'm more interested in the human stories. 

How did the plague or epidemic affect the lives and livelihoods of the average person? How did it spread? How did the people and their governments react to the crisis? What myths and propaganda grew up around them? What methods did they use to control the spread? How did each one eventually end? What was the price that the town/city/country/continent paid during and afterwards - economically, culturally, spiritually, artistically and medically?

Non-fiction is the name of this game, but if you also know of any fabulous fiction not already on my list, then please add that in the comments below as well.

My 2014 Holocaust and Coco Chanel Be the Expert post is here.
My 2017 Holocaust Be the Expert post is here.
My 2018 Napoleon & the French Revolution Become the Expert post is here.

My 2019 Japan Be the Expert post is here.