Dread

How Fear and Fantasy Have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to Avian Flu

By: Phillip Alcabes

Narrated by: Simon Prebble

The average individual is far more likely to die in a car accident than from a communicable disease...yet we are still much more fearful of an epidemic. Even at our most level-headed, the thought of an epidemic can inspire terror. As Philip Alcabes persuasively argues in Dread, our anxieties about epidemics are created not so much by the germ or microbe in question - or the actual risks of contagion - but by the unknown, the undesirable, and the misunderstood.

Alcabes examines epidemics through history to show how they reflect the particular social and cultural anxieties of their times. From Typhoid Mary to bioterrorism, as new outbreaks are unleashed or imagined, new fears surface, new enemies are born, and new behaviors emerge. Dread dissects the fascinating story of the imagined epidemic: the one that we think is happening, or might happen; the one that disguises moral judgments and political agendas; the one that ultimately expresses our deepest fears.

©2009 Philip Alcabes (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Showing how even epidemics hinge on societal attitudes and expectations, Alcabes presents an engrossing, revealing account of the relationship between progress and plague." (Publishers Weekly)

Informative but dull

Any additional comments?

There are aspects to this audiobook that are much to like. It ably recaps mankind’s fear of and responses to outbreaks of disease and illness along a historical timeline in a sort of Epidemiology 101 primer way. In this respect it is informative without being trivial and will interest listeners with little or no understanding of the topic. In using an expansive definition of “epidemic” to include conditions which arguably are neither illnesses nor necessarily transmittable (e.g. autism, obesity), the author is able to focus more on mankind’s social response to perceived causes and “cures” rather than disease pathology. In this regard, Dread can intrigue by tracing how little our thinking has evolved over the centuries in our need to 1) find a cause for each epidemic and 2) equate that cause with an ethnic, religious, behavioural, or other scapegoat to both fear and blame. Still, I found it difficult to really get into this book. Despite the intriguing title, the writing style is dry and academic, akin to reading a textbook and the professorial tone of the narration brought me back to some of my worst experiences as a University freshman. In the end, this book may be better suited to skimming rather than listening to from start to finish.