Description
Product ID: | 9781509867431 |
Product Form: | Paperback / softback |
Country of Manufacture: | GB |
Title: | Until Proven Safe |
Subtitle: | The gripping history of quarantine, from the Black Death to the post-Covid future |
Authors: | Author: Geoff Manaugh, Nicola Twilley |
Page Count: | 416 |
Subjects: | History, Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, Social and cultural history, Human rights, civil rights, Personal and public health / health education, Health systems and services, Infectious and contagious diseases, Social & cultural history, Human rights, Personal & public health, Health systems & services, Infectious & contagious diseases |
Description: | Select Guide Rating A riveting, thought-provoking and very timely account of the idea and the reality of quarantine around the world, examining not only the history but the implications of a system that our lives rely on. <p><b>'Manaugh and Twilley shed illuminating light on a phenomenon that seems utterly of the present moment.' <i>Financial Times’ </i>Best Books of the Year</b><br><br><b>'Startlingly timely, authoritatively researched, and electrifyingly written.' Steve Silberman, author of <i>NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity</i></b><br><br>Quarantine has shaped our world, yet it remains both feared and misunderstood. It is our most powerful response to uncertainty, but it operates through an assumption of guilt: in quarantine, we are considered infectious until proven safe. An unusually poetic metaphor for moral and mythic ills, quarantine means waiting to see if something hidden inside of us will be revealed. <br><br><i>Until Proven Safe</i> tracks the history and future of quarantine around the globe, chasing the story of emergency isolation through time and space – from the crumbling lazarettos of the Mediterranean to the hallways of the CDC, to the corporate giants hoping to disrupt the widespread quarantine imposed by Covid-19 before the next pandemic hits through surveillance and algorithmic prediction.<br><br>Yet quarantine is more than just a medical tool: Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley drop deep into the Earth to tour a nuclear-waste isolation facility beneath the New Mexican desert, strip down to nothing but protective Tyvek suits to see plants stricken with a disease that threatens the world’s wheat supply, and meet NASA’s Planetary Protection Officer tasked with saving the Earth from extraterrestrial infections. <br><br>The result is part travelogue, part intellectual history – a book as compelling as it is definitive, and one that could not be more urgent or timely.</p> |
Imprint Name: | Picador |
Publisher Name: | Pan Macmillan |
Country of Publication: | GB |
Publishing Date: | 2022-03-17 |