The average person produces about four hundred pounds of excrement a year. More than seven billion people live on this planet. Holy crap!

Because of the diseases it spreads, we have learned to distance ourselves from our waste, but the long line of engineering marvels we've created to do so--from Roman sewage systems and medieval latrines to the immense, computerized treatment plants we use today--has also done considerable damage to the earth's ecology. Now scientists tell us: we've been wasting our waste. When recycled correctly, this resource, cheap and widely available, can be converted into a sustainable energy source, act as an organic fertilizer, provide effective medicinal therapy for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection, and much more.

In The Other Dark Matter: The Science and Business of Turning Waste Into Wealth and Health (U Chicago Press, 2021), Lina Zeldovich documents the massive redistribution of nutrients and sanitation inequities across the globe. She profiles the pioneers of poop upcycling, from startups in African villages to innovators in American cities that convert sewage into fertilizer, biogas, crude oil, and even life-saving medicine. She breaks taboos surrounding sewage disposal and shows how hygienic waste repurposing can help battle climate change, reduce acid rain, and eliminate toxic algal blooms. Ultimately, she implores us to use our innate organic power for the greater good. Don't just sit there and let it go to waste.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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"Quarantine, as an invention of man, is the most primitive and universal instrument of defense against contagious disease epidemics. Almost universally maligned or ignored by historians, quarantine is like an iceberg with 90 percent of its secrets hidden from view in inaccessible archives of the government." 

In Germs at Bay: Politics, Public Health, and American Quarantine (Praeger/ABC-Clio, 2021), Charles Vidich explores the surprisingly rich history of quarantine in America. It's gone through five different stages and has, at times, played a key role in the American revolutionary war, the development of immigration policy, and even spawned its own code language to prevent panic from breaking out among the public. When quarantine works well, it can save lives -- but, as Vidich argues, a number of factors have to work in sync for it to be successful, and that is rarely the case.

This book is for anyone seeking to understand the challenges of controlling the spread of COVID-19, and will help readers internalize the lessons that are being demonstrated through the handling of this pandemic. Replete with primary data from years of archival exploration, Germs at Bay demonstrates the United States' long reliance on quarantine practice, and the political, social, and economic factors at all levels of government that have influenced--and been influenced by--them.

Christopher S. Rose is a social historian of medicine focusing on Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean in the 19th and 20th century. He currently (spring 2022) teaches History at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas, and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

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Kenneth Anderson is the author of Strychnine and Gold, a two-volume history of the “untold story of addiction treatment in the United States.” Anderson knows what he’s talking about when he discusses substance use and treatment–he holds multiple master’s degrees, including one in psychology and substance use disorders, and has worked in the field of addiction treatment for over twenty years as the founder and CEO of the HAMS Harm Reduction Network, the first worldwide harm reduction-based support group specifically for people who drink alcohol. The author of two previous books about alcohol harm reduction, Anderson is a regular presenter at the National Harm Reduction Conference, and has been a guest speaker at the Harlem Hospital Harm Reduction Program, the New School for Social Research, NYU, and the Drug Policy Conference, among other venues.

Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). A drug historian and writer, her second book, on the development of the opioid addiction medication industry, is under contract with the University of Chicago Press.

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In the United States, tens of thousands of children are conceived every year with donated gametes. When people decide to create a child with donated gametes, they’ll typically have to make a moral decision about whether the identity of the donor will be available to the resulting person. This quickly raises additional moral and even existential questions about the value of knowing about the circumstances of our own conception.

In Conceiving People: Genetic Knowledge and the Ethics of Sperm and Egg Donation (Oxford UP, 2021) Daniel Groll argues that because donor-conceived persons are likely to develop a significant and worthwhile interest in knowing the identity of their genetic progenitor, their intended parents have an obligation to use a non-anonymous donor.

Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.

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Elaborately conceived, grandly constructed insane asylums—ranging in appearance from classical temples to Gothic castles—were once a common sight looming on the outskirts of American towns and cities. Many of these buildings were razed long ago, and those that remain stand as grim reminders of an often cruel system. For much of the nineteenth century, however, these asylums epitomized the widely held belief among doctors and social reformers that insanity was a curable disease and that environment—architecture in particular—was the most effective means of treatment.

In The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States (U Minnesota Press, 2007), Carla Yanni tells a compelling story of therapeutic design, from America’s earliest purpose—built institutions for the insane to the asylum construction frenzy in the second half of the century. At the center of Yanni’s inquiry is Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, a Pennsylvania-born Quaker, who in the 1840s devised a novel way to house the mentally diseased that emphasized segregation by severity of illness, ease of treatment and surveillance, and ventilation. After the Civil War, American architects designed Kirkbride-plan hospitals across the country.

Before the end of the century, interest in the Kirkbride plan had begun to decline. Many of the asylums had deteriorated into human warehouses, strengthening arguments against the monolithic structures advocated by Kirkbride. At the same time, the medical profession began embracing a more neurological approach to mental disease that considered architecture as largely irrelevant to its treatment.

Generously illustrated, The Architecture of Madness is a fresh and original look at the American medical establishment’s century-long preoccupation with therapeutic architecture as a way to cure social ills.

Bryan Toepfer, AIA, NCARB, CAPM is the Principal Architect for TOEPFER Architecture, PLLC, an Architecture firm specializing in Residential Architecture and Virtual Reality. He has authored two books, “Contractors CANNOT Build Your House,” and “Six Months Now, ARCHITECT for Life.” He is an Assistant Professor at Alfred State College and has served as the Director of Education for the AIA Rochester Board of Directors. Always eager to help anyone understand the world of Architecture, he can be reached by sending an email to btoepfer@toepferarchitecture.

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Inside our heads we carry around an infinite and endlessly unfolding map of the world. Navigation is one of the most ancient neural abilities we have―older than language. In Dark and Magical Places: The Neuroscience of Navigation (Norton, 2022), Christopher Kemp embarks on a journey to discover the remarkable extent of what our minds can do.

Fueled by his own spatial shortcomings, Kemp describes the brain regions that orient us in space and the specialized neurons that do it. Place cells. Grid cells. He examines how the brain plans routes, recognizes landmarks, and makes sure we leave a room through a door instead of trying to leave through a painting. From the secrets of supernavigators like the indigenous hunters of the Bolivian rainforest to the confusing environments inhabited by people with place blindness, Kemp charts the myriad ways in which we find our way and explains the cutting-edge neuroscience behind them.

How did Neanderthals navigate? Why do even seasoned hikers stray from the trail? What spatial skills do we inherit from our parents? How can smartphones and our reliance on GPS devices impact our brains? In engaging, engrossing language, Kemp unravels the mysteries of navigating and links the brain’s complex functions to the effects that diseases like Alzheimer’s, types of amnesia, and traumatic brain injuries have on our perception of the world around us.

A book for anyone who has ever felt compelled to venture off the beaten path, Dark and Magical Places is a stirring reminder of the beauty in losing yourself to your surroundings. And the beauty in understanding how our brains can guide us home.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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From mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue to chronic bacterial infections such as yaws, Southeast Asia is home to a wide range of tropical diseases. For a long time, the arrival in the region of these and other dangerous tropical diseases was believed to be connected to the introduction of agriculture. But how long have these diseases really been around for? How are they connected to the region’s fluctuating social and environmental conditions? And how have they impacted the human populations of Southeast Asia over time?

Joining Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories, bioarchaeologist Dr Melandri Vlok sheds light on the complex science of paleoepidemiology and its use of advanced analytical practices such as DNA ancestry, skeletal studies, and teeth calculus to uncover ancient stories of illness and disease. She explains that far from being mere remnants of the past, archaeological human remains can help us understand the evolution and spread of pathogens, and inform strategies to curb the spread of infectious diseases in human populations.

About Melandri Vlok:

Dr Melandri Vlok is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre. Melandri specialises in palaeopathology/ bioarchaeology and researches the implications for migration and trade on the presence of infectious and nutritional diseases in past populations in Asia. Melandri's work, funded by grant bodies including National Geographic and the Royal Society of New Zealand, has involved the analysis of human skeletal remains from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand and the Philippines. She is also involved with repatriation efforts focused on returning Māori and Moriori ancestral remains to iwi and imi (tribes) in New Zealand.

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

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Societies all over the world are getting older, the result of the fact that we are living longer and having fewer children. At some point in the near future, much of the developed world will have at least twenty percent of their national populations over the age of sixty-five. Bradley Schurman calls this the Super Age. Today, Italy, Japan, and Germany have already reached the Super Age, and another ten countries will have gone over the tipping point in 2021. Thirty-five countries will be part of this club by the end of the decade. This seismic shift in the world population can portend a period of tremendous growth--or leave swaths of us behind.

In The Super Age: Decoding Our Demographic Destiny (Harper Business, 2022), Schurman explains how changing demographics will affect government and business and touch all of our lives. Fewer people working and paying income taxes, due to outdated employment and retirement practices, could mean less money feeding popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare--with greater numbers relying on them. The forced retirement or redundancy of older workers could impact business by creating a shortage of workers, which would likely drive wages up and result in inflation. Corporations, too, must rethink marketing strategies--older consumers are already purchasing the majority of new cars, and they are a growing and vitally important market for health technologies and housing. Architects and designers must re-create homes and communities that are more inclusive of people of all ages and abilities.

If we aren't prepared for the changes to come, Schurman warns, we face economic stagnation, increased isolation of at-risk populations, and accelerated decline of rural communities. Instead, we can plan now to harness the benefits of the Super Age: extended and healthier lives, more generational cooperation at work and home, and new markets and products to explore. The choice is ours to make.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at [email protected].

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In Health, Healing and Illness in African History (Bloomsbury, 2021), Rebekah Lee makes an overall assessment of the history and historiography and health, healing and illness in the African context. This unique text is divided in two parts. In the first half of the book, Lee presents a chronological survey and analysis of the ideas and literature that multiple disciplines have produced while studying the experience of health and illness, as well as medical and healing practices in Africa. This part of the book guides readers through seminal questions about African agency and sources that are central to our understanding of the historiography of Africa in general, and to the study of healing and illness in particular. 

By starting her narrative in the precolonial past, Lee is not only trying to highlight the value of the research that has been done in this area, but also provide the reader with a wider intellectual and chronological context that can reframe our reading of the literature that exists for the colonial and postcolonial periods. In the second part of the book, Lee examines four case studies each focused on a particular health problem: HIV/Aids, mental illness, malaria and sleeping sickness, and occupational lung disease. In each of these individual studies, Lee offers both a historiographical review and a critical assessment of the ideas and questions that have shaped our views of these issues. She also offers examples of primary sources that illustrate the complex ways in which scholars, from many different disciplinary backgrounds, have used them to draw conclusions about how Africans have experienced health and illness, and engaged with a wide range of healing practices over time.

Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia is an associate professor of history at Montclair State University.

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In 1948, the World Health Organization began to prepare its social psychiatry project, which aimed to discover the epidemiology and arrive at a classification of mental disorders. In Mad by the Millions: Mental Disorders and the Early Years of the World Health Organization (MIT Press, 2021), Harry Y-Jui Wu examines the WHO's ambitious project, arguing that it was shaped by the postwar faith in technology and expertise and the universalizing vision of a “world psyche.” Wu shows that the WHO's idealized scientific internationalism laid the foundations for today's highly metricalized global mental health system.

Examining the interactions between the WHO and developing countries, Wu offers an analysis of the “transnationality” of mental health. He examines knowledge-sharing between the organization and African and Latin American collaborators, and looks in detail at the WHO's selection of a Taiwanese scientist, Tsung-yi Lin, to be its medical officer and head of the social psychiatry project. He discusses scientists' pursuit of standardization—not only to synchronize sectors in the organization but also to produce a common language of psychiatry—and how technological advances supported this. Wu considers why the optimism and idealism of the social psychiatry project turned to dissatisfaction, reappraising the WHO's early knowledge production modality through the concept of an “export processing zone.” Finally, he looks at the WHO's project in light of current debates over psychiatry and global mental health, as scientists shift their concerns from the creation of universal metrics to the importance of local matrixes.

Harry Yi-Jui Wu is Associate Professor in the Cross College Elite Program and Department of Medical Humanities and Social Medicine at National Cheng-Kung University in Taiwan.

Kelvin Chan is a PhD Candidate at McGill University. His PhD dissertation focuses on the history of psychiatry and mental health care in colonial Hong Kong.

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