March 19, 2025

The Chris Voss Show Podcast – A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19 by Edna Bonhomme

24 minutes

A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19 by Edna Bonhomme

Amazon.com

Ednabonhomme.com

A deeply reported, insightful, and literary account of humankind’s battles with epidemic disease, and their outsized role in deepening inequality along racial, ethnic, class, and gender lines—in the vein of Medical Apartheid and Killing the Black Body.

Epidemic diseases enter the world by chance, but they become catastrophic by human design.

With clear-eyed research and lush prose, A History of the World in Six Plagues shows that throughout history, outbreaks of disease have been exacerbated by and gone on to further expand the racial, economic, and sociopolitical divides we allow to fester in times of good health.

Princeton-trained historian Edna Bonhomme’s examination of humanity’s disastrous treatment of pandemic disease takes us across place and time from Port-au-Prince to Tanzania, and from plantation-era America to our modern COVID-19-scarred world to unravel shocking truths about the patterns of discrimination in the face of disease. Based on in-depth research and cultural analysis, Bonhomme explores Cholera, HIV/AIDS, the Spanish Flu, Sleeping Sickness, Ebola, and COVID-19 amidst the backdrop of unequal public policy. But much more than a remarkable history, A History of the World in Six Plaguesis also a rising call for change.ABOUT

Edna Bonhomme is a historian of science, culture writer, and journalist based in Berlin, Germany. She writes cultural criticism, literary essays, book reviews, and opinion pieces. Her writing explores how people navigate the difficult states of health—especially subjects that discuss contagious outbreaks, medical experiments, reproductive assistance, or illness narratives. She is a contributing writer for Frieze Magazine. Her writing has appeared in Al Jazeera, The Atlantic, The Baffler, Berliner Zeitung, Esquire, Frieze, The Guardian, London Review of Books, The Nation, Washington Post, among other publications.

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