Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between

Download Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393881377
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (938 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between by : Joseph Osmundson

Download or read book Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between written by Joseph Osmundson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Literary Hub A leading microbiologist tackles the scientific and sociopolitical impact of viruses in twelve striking essays. Invisible in the food we eat, the people we kiss, and inside our own bodies, viruses flourish—with the power to shape not only our health, but our social, political, and economic systems. Drawing on his expertise in microbiology, Joseph Osmundson brings readers under the microscope to understand the structure and mechanics of viruses and to examine how viruses like HIV and COVID-19 have redefined daily life. Osmundson’s buoyant prose builds on the work of the activists and thinkers at the forefront of the HIV/AIDS crisis and critical scholars like José Esteban Munoz to navigate the intricacies of risk reduction, draw parallels between queer theory and hard science, and define what it really means to “go viral.” This dazzling multidisciplinary collection offers novel insights on illness, sex, and collective responsibility. Virology is a critical warning, a necessary reflection, and a call for a better future.

Inside/Out

Download Inside/Out PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781943977444
Total Pages : 102 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (774 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Inside/Out by : Joseph Osmundson

Download or read book Inside/Out written by Joseph Osmundson and published by . This book was released on 2018-01-18 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In tracking an obsessive relationship that treads the devastating line between dysfunction and abuse, Joseph Osmundson explores how vulnerability, need, and shame echo across a life. Inside/Out is a beautiful and brave book." - Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

The Viral Underclass

Download The Viral Underclass PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Celadon Books
ISBN 13 : 1250796652
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (57 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Viral Underclass by : Steven W. Thrasher

Download or read book The Viral Underclass written by Steven W. Thrasher and published by Celadon Books. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 PEN/JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH AWARD FOR NONFICTION** **LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDALS FOR EXCELLENCE** **WINNER OF THE 2022 POZ AWARD FOR BEST IN LITERATURE** "An irresistibly readable and humane exploration of the barbarities of class...readers are gifted that most precious of things in these muddled times: a clear lens through which to see the world." —Naomi Klein, New York Times bestselling author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine From preeminent LGBTQ scholar, social critic, and journalist Steven W. Thrasher comes a powerful and crucial exploration of one of the most pressing issues of our times: how viruses expose the fault lines of society. Having spent a ground-breaking career studying the racialization, policing, and criminalization of HIV, Dr. Thrasher has come to understand a deeper truth at the heart of our society: that there are vast inequalities in who is able to survive viruses and that the ways in which viruses spread, kill, and take their toll are much more dependent on social structures than they are on biology alone. Told through the heart-rending stories of friends, activists, and teachers navigating the novel coronavirus, HIV, and other viruses, Dr. Thrasher brings the reader with him as he delves into the viral underclass and lays bare its inner workings. In the tradition of Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, The Viral Underclass helps us understand the world more deeply by showing the fraught relationship between privilege and survival.

The Tipping Point

Download The Tipping Point PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Little, Brown
ISBN 13 : 0759574731
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (595 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Tipping Point by : Malcolm Gladwell

Download or read book The Tipping Point written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2006-11-01 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia: discover Malcolm Gladwell's breakthrough debut and explore the science behind viral trends in business, marketing, and human behavior. The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas. “A wonderful page-turner about a fascinating idea that should affect the way every thinking person looks at the world.” —Michael Lewis

A Planet of Viruses

Download A Planet of Viruses PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022632026X
Total Pages : 133 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (263 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis A Planet of Viruses by : Carl Zimmer

Download or read book A Planet of Viruses written by Carl Zimmer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For years, scientists have been warning us that a pandemic was all but inevitable. Now it's here, and the rest of us have a lot to learn. Fortunately, science writer Carl Zimmer is here to guide us. In this compact volume, he tells the story of how the smallest living things known to science can bring an entire planet of people to a halt--and what we can learn from how we've defeated them in the past. Planet of Viruses covers such threats as Ebola, MERS, and chikungunya virus; tells about recent scientific discoveries, such as a hundred-million-year-old virus that infected the common ancestor of armadillos, elephants, and humans; and shares new findings that show why climate change may lead to even deadlier outbreaks. Zimmer’s lucid explanations and fascinating stories demonstrate how deeply humans and viruses are intertwined. Viruses helped give rise to the first life-forms, are responsible for many of our most devastating diseases, and will continue to control our fate for centuries. Thoroughly readable, and, for all its honesty about the threats, as reassuring as it is frightening, A Planet of Viruses is a fascinating tour of a world we all need to better understand.

Funeral Diva

Download Funeral Diva PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : City Lights Books
ISBN 13 : 0872868133
Total Pages : 119 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (728 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Funeral Diva by : Pamela Sneed

Download or read book Funeral Diva written by Pamela Sneed and published by City Lights Books. This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Funeral Diva is the Winner of the Lambda Award for Lesbian Poetry! A poetic memoir about coming-of-age in the AIDS era, and its effects on life and art. "Sneed is an acclaimed reader of her own poetry, and the book has the feeling of live performance. . . . Its strength is in its abundance, its desire for language to stir body as well as mind."—Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book Review "She is a writer for the future, in that she defies genre."—Hilton Als "This notable achievement, traveling from youth to adulthood, is a harrowing account of how Sneed transforms violence and pain into an artist's life."—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen: An American Lyric "There's an eerie sense of timeliness to this book, which features prose and poetry by the writer and teacher Pamela Sneed and is largely — though not entirely — about mourning Black gay men killed too soon by a deadly virus."—Tomi Obaro, Buzzfeed "OH MY GOODNESS, it was amazing. I was in tears by the end. What starts off as beautiful memoir evolves into incredibly moving poetry, painful and sweet and lovely."—Marie Cloutier, Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY "Balancing and mixing, with rhyme and reason, love and anger, good and bad, memory and the created present, all to tell the story of a life, a memoir unrestrained, devoid of artificial forms. Honest. Free."—Anjanette Delgado, New York Journal of Books In this collection of personal essays and poetry, acclaimed poet and performer Pamela Sneed details her coming of age in New York City during the late 1980s. Funeral Diva captures the impact of AIDS on Black Queer life, and highlights the enduring bonds between the living, the dying, and the dead. Sneed’s poems not only converse with lovers past and present, but also with her literary forebears—like James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde—whose aesthetic and thematic investments she renews for a contemporary American landscape. Offering critical focus on matters from police brutality to LGBTQ+ rights, Funeral Diva confronts today's most pressing issues with acerbic wit and audacity. The collection closes with Sneed's reflections on the two pandemics of her time, AIDS and COVID-19, and the disproportionate impact of each on African American communities. "Riveting, personal, open-hearted, risky and wise."—Sarah Schulman, author of Conflict Is Not Abuse " . . . a tour de force about the collision between a coalescing 1980s 'Black lesbian and gay literary and poetic movement' in New York and the onslaught of AIDS."—Donna Seaman, Booklist "Pamela Sneed's Funeral Diva is deft, defiant, and devastating."—Tommy Pico, author of Feed "Funeral Diva is urgent and necessary reading to live by. This is writing at its finest. Keep this book close to your heart and soul."—Karen Finley, author of Shock Treatment "Reminiscent of Audre Lorde’s Zami, Pamela Sneed’s memoir is, in itself, a healing balm, affirming in its truths and honesty. I cannot remember ever reading a book that illustrates the impact of the AIDS epidemic on our community more poignantly than Funeral Diva."—Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Patsy "Pamela Sneed takes enormous risks in this book. She tells the truth with fierce concentration and an abiding sense of purpose.”—Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina

Life Stories

Download Life Stories PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520218963
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (189 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Life Stories by : Heather Newbold

Download or read book Life Stories written by Heather Newbold and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000-04-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This unusual collection of conversations with leading environmental thinkers breaks down the conventional separation between thinking and living. The presentations of ecological ideas are not only superior but often eloquent and powerful, and incorporate the latest information available. Since many of the chapters give quite full accounts of the interviewees' careers, the book will also provide inspiration to young readers." —Ernest Callenbach, author of Ecology: A Pocket Guide "The recurring theme of environmental emergency comes through loud and clear in all of the interviews, but this book also shows that it is people who make things happen, not the great gray 'they' or 'we.' We learn exactly who it was that discovered the hole in the ozone layer and who invented the ideas of Gaia and the Population Bomb. . . . If I had my way I would make this book required reading for students across all disciplines, because its message is profound, urgent, compelling, and relevant to everyone."—Anthony J. F. Griffiths, University of British Columbia, Winner of the Genetics Society of Canada Award of Excellence "Life Stories should be required reading. The reverence for life expressed by these heroes is deeply moving. Their fierce determination ought to inspire all of us as we confront the environmental challenges of the new millennium." —Denis Hayes, International Chair, Earth Day 2000 "We start the twenty-first century with a heightened awareness that our planet is under stress. Life Stories illustrates that the human spirit has the capacity to set forces in motion that will save our habitat. Heather Newbold introduces us to scientists who have probed the mysteries of our natural systems and taken action so our Earth can heal itself. As we meet them, our own hope for the future is inspired."—Peter A. A. Berle, host of The Environment Show on Public Radio "These mini-autobiographies are captivating, challenging, and worrisome. We can successfully meet the challenge, but will we? This is attention-grabbing stuff. Once you start reading this book it will capture and hold you to the last page."—Senator Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day

Greek Tragedy in a Global Crisis

Download Greek Tragedy in a Global Crisis PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350348147
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (53 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Greek Tragedy in a Global Crisis by : Mario Telò

Download or read book Greek Tragedy in a Global Crisis written by Mario Telò and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-05-18 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to read Greek tragedy in a pandemic, a global crisis? How can Greek tragedy address urgent contemporary troubles? One of the outstanding and most widely read theorists in the discipline, Mario Telò, brings together a deep understanding of Greek tragedy and its most famous icons with contemporary times. In close readings of plays such as Alcestis, Antigone, Bacchae, Hecuba, Oedipus the King, Prometheus Bound, and Trojan Women, our experience is precariously refracted back in the formal worlds of plays named after and, to an extent, epitomized by tragic characters. Structured around four thematic clusters – Air Time Faces, Communities, Ruins, and Insurrections – this book presents timely interventions in critical theory and in the debates that matter to us as disaster becomes routine in the time-out-of-joint of a (post-)pandemic world. Violently encompassing all pre-existing and future crises (relational, political and ecological), the pandemic coincides with the queer unhistoricism of tragedy, and its collapsing of present, past, and future readerships.

Touching the Art

Download Touching the Art PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Catapult
ISBN 13 : 1593767358
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (937 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Touching the Art by : Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Download or read book Touching the Art written by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2023-11-07 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A daringly observant memoir about intergenerational trauma, fine art, and compartmentalization from a returning Soft Skull author and Lambda Literary Award winner A mixture of memoir, biography, criticism, and social history, Touching the Art is queer icon and activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s interrogation of the possibilities of artistic striving, the limits of the middle-class mindset, the legacy of familial abandonment, and what art can and cannot do. Taking the form of a self-directed research project, Sycamore recounts the legacy of her fraught relationship with her late grandmother, an abstract artist from Baltimore who encouraged Mattilda as a young artist, then disparaged Mattilda’s work as “vulgar” and a “waste of talent” once it became unapologetically queer. As she sorts through her grandmother Gladys’s paintings and handmade paperworks, Sycamore examines the creative impulse itself. In fragments evoking the movements of memory, she searches for Gladys’s place within the trajectories of midcentury modernism and Abstract Expressionism, Jewish assimilation and white flight, intergenerational trauma and class striving. Sycamore writes, “Art is never just art, it is a history of feeling, a gap between sensations, a safety valve, an escape hatch, a sudden shift in the body, a clipboard full of flowers, a welcome mat flipped over and back, over and back, welcome.” Refusing easy answers in search of an embodied truth, Sycamore upends propriety to touch the art and feel everything that comes through.

Gendering Green Criminology

Download Gendering Green Criminology PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Policy Press
ISBN 13 : 1529229618
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (292 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Gendering Green Criminology by : Emma Milne

Download or read book Gendering Green Criminology written by Emma Milne and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2023-10-06 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first volume in green criminology devoted to gender, this book investigates gendered patterns to offending, victimisation and environmental harms. Including feminist and intersectional analysis, and with original case studies from the Global North and Global South, the book also examines actions that have been taken in response to gendered crimes and harms, together with insights on the gendered nature of resistance. The collection advances debate on green crimes, environmental harm and climate change and will inspire students and researchers to foreground gender in debates about reducing and transforming the challenges affecting our planet's future.

The Reckonings

Download The Reckonings PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Scribner
ISBN 13 : 1501159011
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (11 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Reckonings by : Lacy M. Johnson

Download or read book The Reckonings written by Lacy M. Johnson and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Unflinching and honest…both timely and timeless” (Houston Chronicle), this extraordinary collection of essays by the award-winning writer of The Other Side—rooted in her own experience with sexual assault—pursues questions that strike at the heart of our national conversation about the justness of society. In 2014, Lacy Johnson was giving a reading from The Other Side, her “instant classic” (Kirkus Reviews) memoir of kidnapping and rape, when a woman asked her what she would like to happen to her rapist. This collection “attempts to parcel out several knotted problems and suggests forms of meaningful justice” (Booklist, starred review). Drawing from philosophy, art, literature, mythology, anthropology, film, and her own experience of violence, Johnson considers how our ideas about justice might be expanded beyond vengeance and retribution to include acts of compassion, patience, mercy, and grace. “The Reckonings is not a book about changing the world. It’s philosophy in disguise, equal parts memoir, criticism, and ethics…The twelve essays deserve great consideration, while you read it and long after” (NPR). From “Speak Truth to Power,” about the condition of not being believed about rape and assault; to “Goliath,” about the ways evil is used as a form of social control; to “The Fallout,” about ecological and generational violence, Johnson creates masterful, elaborate, gorgeously written essays that speak incisively about our current era. She grapples with justice and retribution, truth and fairness, and sexual assault and workplace harassment, as well as the broadest societal wrongs: the BP Oil Spill, government malfeasance, police killings. The Reckonings is a powerful and necessary work, ambitious in its scope, which “challenges our culture’s expectations of justice and expose the limits of vengeance and mercy” (Ms. Magazine).

Armed with Madness

Download Armed with Madness PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (45 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Armed with Madness by : Mary Butts

Download or read book Armed with Madness written by Mary Butts and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

How Pathogenic Viruses Work

Download How Pathogenic Viruses Work PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Jones & Bartlett Learning
ISBN 13 : 9780763720827
Total Pages : 132 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (28 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis How Pathogenic Viruses Work by : Lauren Sompayrac

Download or read book How Pathogenic Viruses Work written by Lauren Sompayrac and published by Jones & Bartlett Learning. This book was released on 2002 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A clever, accessible overview that uses a survey of 12 of the most common viral infections, to teach the fundamental principles of human virology.

Life's Edge

Download Life's Edge PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Pan Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 1529069440
Total Pages : 480 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Life's Edge by : Carl Zimmer

Download or read book Life's Edge written by Carl Zimmer and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2021-03-18 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘This book is not just about life, but about discovery itself. It is about error and hubris, but also about wonder and the reach of science. And it is bookended with the ultimate question: How do we define the thing that defines us?’ – Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Gene We all assume we know what life is, but the more scientists learn about the living world – from protocells to brains, from zygotes to pandemic viruses – the harder they find it to locate the edges of life, where it begins and ends. What exactly does it mean to be alive? Is a virus alive? Is a foetus? Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts – whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead. Life’s Edge is an utterly fascinating investigation by one of the most celebrated science writers of our time. Zimmer journeys through the strange experiments that have attempted to recreate life. Literally hundreds of definitions of what that should look like now exist, but none has yet emerged as an obvious winner. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a theory of life. It’s never clear why some items on the list are essential and others not. Coronaviruses have altered the course of history, and yet many scientists maintain they are not alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm, sense their environment, and multiply – have they made life in the lab? Whether he is handling pythons in Alabama or searching for hibernating bats in the Adirondacks, Zimmer revels in astounding examples of life at its most bizarre. He tries his own hand at evolving life in a test tube with unnerving results. Charting the obsession with Dr Frankenstein’s monster and how Coleridge came to believe the whole universe was alive, Zimmer leads us all the way into the labs and minds of researchers working on engineering life from the ground up.

African Religions

Download African Religions PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199790582
Total Pages : 177 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis African Religions by : Jacob K. Olupona

Download or read book African Religions written by Jacob K. Olupona and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book connects traditional religions to the thriving religious activity in Africa today.

Breathing Aesthetics

Download Breathing Aesthetics PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 147802349X
Total Pages : 146 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (78 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Breathing Aesthetics by : Jean-Thomas Tremblay

Download or read book Breathing Aesthetics written by Jean-Thomas Tremblay and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-29 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Breathing Aesthetics Jean-Thomas Tremblay argues that difficult breathing indexes the uneven distribution of risk in a contemporary era marked by the increasing contamination, weaponization, and monetization of air. Tremblay shows how biopolitical and necropolitical forces tied to the continuation of extractive capitalism, imperialism, and structural racism are embodied and experienced through respiration. They identify responses to the crisis in breathing in aesthetic practices ranging from the film work of Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta to the disability diaries of Bob Flanagan, to the Black queer speculative fiction of Renee Gladman. In readings of these and other minoritarian works of experimental film, endurance performance, ecopoetics, and cinema-vérité, Tremblay contends that articulations of survival now depend on the management and dispersal of respiratory hazards. In so doing, they reveal how an aesthetic attention to breathing generates historically, culturally, and environmentally situated tactics and strategies for living under precarity.

Flu

Download Flu PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1429979356
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Flu by : Gina Kolata

Download or read book Flu written by Gina Kolata and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Veteran journalist Gina Kolata's Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It presents a fascinating look at true story of the world's deadliest disease. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic felled the young and healthy virtually overnight. An estimated forty million people died as the epidemic raged. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. As many American soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu as were killed in battle during World War I. And no area of the globe was safe. Eskimos living in remote outposts in the frozen tundra were sickened and killed by the flu in such numbers that entire villages were wiped out. Scientists have recently rediscovered shards of the flu virus frozen in Alaska and preserved in scraps of tissue in a government warehouse. Gina Kolata, an acclaimed reporter for The New York Times, unravels the mystery of this lethal virus with the high drama of a great adventure story. Delving into the history of the flu and previous epidemics, detailing the science and the latest understanding of this mortal disease, Kolata addresses the prospects for a great epidemic recurring, and, most important, what can be done to prevent it.