Adult Book Club (Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World's Worst Diseases by Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen)

Join us on Saturday, June 29, 2024 at 1:00 PM to discuss Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World's Worst Diseases by Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen.

Patient Zero tells the long and fascinating history of disease outbreaks -- how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us.

Chapters include page-turning medical stories about a particular disease or virus -- smallpox, Bubonic plague, polio, HIV -- that combine "Patient Zero" narratives, or the human stories behind the outbreaks, with historical examinations of missteps, milestones, scientific theories, and more.

Learn the tragic stories of Patient Zeros throughout history, such as Mabalo Lokela, who contracted Ebola while on vacation in 1976, and the Lewis Bab y on London's Broad Street, the first to catch cholera in an 1854 outbreak that led to a major medical breakthrough. Inerspersed are origin stories of a different sort -- how a rye fungus in 1951 turned a small village in France into a phantasmagoric scene reminiscent of the Burning Man. Plus the uneasy history of human autopsy, how the HIV virus has been with us for at least a century, and more. (blurb courtesy of the publisher) 

All interested readers (ages 18+) are welcome to attend.

Copies of the book (in regular print, and, if available, in large print and audio) are available to be checked out.

For more information, and a list of the 2024 titles, please visit the Adult Book Club webpage.