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

by Bonhomme, Edna

• ISBN13: 9781982197841
• ISBN10: 1982197846
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2026-03-10
• Publisher: Atria/One Signal Publishers

Summary

An “incredible, humane, insightful” (Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize winner) 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.

With clear-eyed research and lush prose, A History of the World in Six Plagues is “a breathtaking journey through the intertwined histories of contagions and systemic inequities that have shaped our history” (Uché Blackstock, New York Times bestselling author).

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. Also a rising call to action, this “tour de force…will change the way people think about public health and histories of medicine” (Dr. Tiffany N. Florvil, author of Mobilizing Black Germany).

Author Biography

Edna Bonhomme is a historian of science, culture writer, and book critic whose work has appeared in Al Jazeera, The Atlantic, Esquire, Frieze magazine, The Guardian, The Nation, London Review of Books, The Washington Post, and more. She is coeditor of After Sex, a collection of essays, poems, and short stories. She earned a PhD from Princeton University, a master’s degree from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree from Reed College. She previously held fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the Camargo Foundation, Baldwin for the Arts, and Nancy B. Negley Artists Residency Program at Maison Dora Maar. Edna is a recipient of the Robert Silvers Foundation Grant for Works in Progress and the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Grant.