Science historian Edna Bonhomme examines global inequality through six plagues.

On this episode of Fully Booked, Berlin-based science historian, cultural critic, and journalist Edna Bonhomme joins us to discuss A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, From Cholera to Covid-19 (One Signal/Atria, March 11). Bonhomme’s work, which explores contagious outbreaks, medical experiments, reproductive justice, and illness narratives, has appeared in outlets including Al Jazeera, the Atlantic, London Review of Books, andthe Guardian. She is a contributing writer for Frieze Magazine and co-editor of the anthology After Sex (2023).

A History of the World in Six Plagues is a stunning blend of history, cultural criticism, biography, and memoir that Kirkus calls “a searing attack on historical injustices.” Here’s a bit more from our review:

“Accounts of epidemics are a respectable publishing genre, but journalist and science historian Bonhomme uses them as a springboard for exploring inequality. Cholera, a major 19th-century killer, seems to be the subject of the first chapter, yet in a preview of what follows, Bonhomme opens in 1857 New Orleans, where a white physician lectured a meeting of the New Orleans Academy of Science on the supposed inferiority of the Black race. The audience listened respectfully. Although Bonhomme summarizes the nature of cholera, the purported causes (all wrong), and its treatment (always useless, often harmful) according to antebellum medical science, she describes the unspeakable conditions under which enslaved people lived. Readers will realize that this is not a history of epidemics but a fierce polemic arguing that minorities and the poor suffer when diseases ragebecause governments and the medical profession give them short shrift.”

Bonhomme describes A History of the World in Six Plagues as “a historical text that allows people to understand the relationship between contagion and captivity.” She shares the various identities she brings to her multifaceted work; how different cultures talk about the concept of plague; and how she drew inspiration from the work of Susan Sontag, Octavia Butler, historian Dorothy Roberts, and Toni Morrison. We discuss a scene of illness and confinement from Bonhomme’s childhood; list the plagues studied in the book (Covid-19, Ebola, HIV/AIDS, the 1918 flu pandemic, sleeping sickness, cholera); and dig deeper into the 1918 pandemic, with a nod to Virginia Woolf. We talk about experimentation, self-determination, and much more.

Then editors Laura Simeon, Mahnaz Dar, John McMurtrie, and Laurie Muchnick share their top picks in books for the week.

EDITORS’ PICKS:

Huda F Wants To Know? by Huda Fahmy (Dial Books)

A Book of Maps for You by Lourdes Heuer, illus. by Maxwell Eaton III (Neal Porter/Holiday House)

Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer by David Denby (Henry Holt)

Audition by Katie Kitamura (Riverhead)

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

The Bomb That Followed Me Home by Cevin Soling, illus. by Steve Kille

Dylan Is Delightful by Brian Sullivan, illus. by Laura Watso

Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.