Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations
Written by Simon Schama
Narrated by Simon Schama
3/5
()
Unavailable in your country
Unavailable in your country
About this audiobook
‘Superb’ Observer
‘Extraordinary… A meticulous retelling of a terrible yet scientifically innovative period… Makes an urgent case for building a better future on our toxic past’ Guardian
‘This is history of the best sort – humanly engaged but never sentimental’ Mail on Sunday
Cities and countries engulfed by panic and death, desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring. This is what the world has just gone through with Covid-19. But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science, it has happened before.
Characteristically, with Schama the message is delivered through gripping, page-turning stories set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: smallpox strikes London; cholera hits Paris; plague comes to India. Threading through the scenes of terror, suffering and hope – in hospitals and prisons, palaces and slums – are an unforgettable cast of characters: a philosopher-playwright burning up with smallpox in a country chateau; a vaccinating doctor paying house calls in Halifax; a woman doctor in south India driving her inoculator-carriage through the stricken streets as dead monkeys drop from the trees. But we are also in the labs when great, life-saving breakthroughs happen, in Paris, Hong Kong and Mumbai.
At the heart of it all, an unsung hero: Waldemar Haffkine. A gun-toting Jewish student in Odesa turned microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute, hailed in England as ‘the saviour of mankind’ for vaccinating millions against cholera and bubonic plague in British India while being cold-shouldered by the medical establishment of the Raj. Creator of the world’s first mass production line of vaccines in Mumbai, he is tragically brought down in an act of shocking injustice.
Foreign Bodies crosses borders between east and west, Asia and Europe, the worlds of rich and poor, politics and science. Its thrilling story carries with it the credo of its author on the interconnectedness of humanity and nature; of the powerful and the people. Ultimately, Schama says, as we face the challenges of our times together, ‘there are no foreigners, only familiars’.
Simon Schama
Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York. His award-winning books include Scribble, Scribble, Scribble; The American Future: A History; National Book Critics Circle Award winner Rough Crossings; The Power of Art; The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age; Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution; Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations); Landscape and Memory; Rembrandt's Eyes; and the History of Britain trilogy. He has written and presented forty television documentary films for the BBC, PBS, and The History Channel, including the Emmy-winning Power of Art, on subjects that range from John Donne to Tolstoy.
More audiobooks from Simon Schama
Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The American Future Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Foreign Bodies
Related audiobooks
The Lost Rainforests of Britain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey Through Cities at the Heart of Europe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Decade in Tory: An inventory of idiocy from the coalition to Covid Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Iconicon: A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCrypt: Life, Death and Disease in the Middle Ages and Beyond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Agents of Influence: Britain's Secret Intelligence War Against the IRA Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Planes, Trains and Toilet Doors: 50 Places That Changed British Politics Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Northerners: A History, from the Ice Age to the Present Day Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Footmarks: A Journey Into our Restless Past Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings1922: Scenes from a Turbulent Year Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
History For You
The Secret History of the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Five Rings Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Who Cooked the Last Supper?: The Women's History of the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Korean War: A History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Heretic's Handbook Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Razorblade Tears: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Palestine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mary Magdalene: Women, the Church, and the Great Deception Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Small Mercies: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis Thomas Jefferson And The Opening Of The American West Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Story of Art Without Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An American Marriage: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Foreign Bodies
1 rating0 reviews