Book
Dread : how fear and fantasy have fueled epidemics from the Black Death to avian flu
Record details
- ISBN: 9781586486181 (hc)
-
Physical Description:
vii, 313 p., [8] p. of plates : ill., photo. ; 24 cm.
print - Edition: 1st ed.
- Publisher: New York, NY : PublicAffairs, 2009.
Content descriptions
| Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Formatted Contents Note: | The origins of dread --The sense of an epidemic -- Plague : birth of the model epidemic -- Cholera, poverty, and the politicized epidemic -- Germs, science, and the stranger -- The conquest of contagion -- Postmodern epidemics -- Managing the imagined epidemic -- The risk-free life -- Acknowledgements -- Notes -- Selected bibliography -- Index. |
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Available copies
- 2 of 2 copies available at Camosun College Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 2 total copies.
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Circulation Modifier | Holdable? | Status | Due Date | Courses |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interurban Library | RA 649 A43 2009 (Text) | 26040002846570 | Main Collection | Volume hold | Available | - | ||
| Lansdowne Library | RA 649 A43 2009 (Text) | 26040002841704 | Main Collection | Volume hold | Available | - |
More information
- Choice Reviews : Choice Reviews 2009 October
Alcabes (Hunter College, CUNY) has written a wide-ranging account of the history and social significance of epidemics, including the "fear and fantasy" that epidemics have generated in cultures throughout history. As Peter Lewis Allen did in The Wages of Sin: Sex and Disease, Past and Present (CH, Oct'00, 38-0970), Alcabes has traced the role of epidemics in establishing and reinforcing social power relations, from the 14th-century Black Death to HIV/AIDS. His account of the rise of epidemiology, the idea of contagion, and the misuses of germ theory in advancing public health while reinforcing images of the vulnerable "other" as unclean and dangerous is particularly useful. Alcabes concludes with a discussion of modern fears, including bioterrorism, the "plague" of obesity, and autism. The list of such modern fears is quite extensive and includes avian influenza, West Nile virus, necrotizing fasciitis (so-called "flesh-eating" bacteria), and extensively drug-resistant ("XDR") tuberculosis, among many others. Being reminded that one's fears tell an important story about social and economic power relations, about ideas of moral responsibility and religious belief, and about invasion, otherness, and risk in everyday life is a useful antidote to panic and dread. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. Copyright 2009 American Library Association. - ForeWord Magazine Reviews : ForeWord Magazine Reviews 2009 May/June
The bubonic plague was an archetypical societal experience in Europe. It killed about 200 million people in the fourteenth century. In repeated waves that appeared and disappeared over a four hundred-year period, the so-called pestilence imprinted a fear of strangers, a conviction that the sufferer deserved his or her fate, the idea that the plague was heavenly vengeance, and the suspicion that those of a different religion, particularly Jews, were to blame. "[T]he plague was a cataclysm on which people piled meanings: treachery, foreignness, sanctity and faithlessness, dying for ones religion, obeying (or rebelling against) authority, and, of course, the fecklessness of nature. It acquired more layers of metaphor over time" Since then, Western cultures have reacted to outbreaks of deadly diseases with those concepts in mind.
For example, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, earlier prejudices have tainted our treatment of the victims of AIDS, SARS, avian flu, and drug-resistant tuberculosis. Fears of sin, homosexual and non-monogamous sex, and IV drugs have perverted the publics perception of the risks and the victims of HIV and AIDS, and delayed proper funding and research into the virus and effective treatment. In 2005, the mass media hyped the potential spread of flu H5N1, or avian flu, a disease that has killed millions of birds but only 248 humans. The great fear was that the flu would mutate to pass more easily from bird to human and between humans. Internationally, governments stockpiled Tamiflu and individuals demanded prescriptions to combat that possibility, which did not come to pass.
Alcabes is an associate professor at the City University of New Yorks Hunter College campus and has been published extensively in medical journals on public health issues and the social aspects of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. In his absorbing book, Alcabes identifies other health problems, like obesity and autism, that arent germ-based, yet are defined as epidemics. They vie for the attention and funding due a new bubonic plague. But fear is not science, and despite hyperbolic language attached to "good" behavior, life is not without risk. (April)
©2009 ForeWord Magazine. All Rights Reserved. - PW Annex Reviews : Publishers Weekly Annex Reviews
According to Alcabes, an essayist and expert in public health, "epidemics fascinate us"; hopeful projection or not, his study provides enough gruesome details and unexpected sidelights to captivate history fans. Looking first at the plague that swept Europe in recurring waves from 1300 to 1700 ("the model for the epidemic"), Alcabes sorts through the widespread confusion over its cause and method of transmission. Rubbing up against theories of "contagion, intemperate air, poisoned water, astrological influence" and "deviltry," accounts of brutal pogroms and apocalyptic dread, Alcabes makes the science behind the history-as in a description of infected fleas regurgitating the plague bacteria into a victim's system-just as gripping. Cholera reached epidemic proportions in England in 1831, when efforts to clean sewage from the streets poisoned the Thames; at the time, experts were focused on foul air, not foul water. Turning to the present, Alcabes chastises the use of "epidemic" for behavioral issues like obesity or teen sex, and the panic over isolated events like the Anthrax outbreak (only 22 cases), while 9 million cases of tuberculosis go untreated every year. Showing how even epidemics hinge on societal attitudes and expectations, Alcabes presents an engrossing, revealing account of the relationship between progress and plague. (Apr.) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
