Books like The Coming Plague

01

Spillover

David Quammen · Science

Spillover is David Quammen's exhaustive investigation into zoonotic disease — illness that jumps from animals to humans — and the ecological and evolutionary logic behind why such spillover events happen.

Shares epidemics and public health with The Coming Plague.

02

The Hot Zone

Richard Preston · Science

The Hot Zone is Richard Preston's account of the discovery of filoviruses — Marburg and Ebola — and, more urgently, the 1989 outbreak of a closely related virus in a primate facility in Reston, Virginia, twenty miles from Washington DC.

Both dig into epidemics.

03

The Great Influenza

John M. Barry · History

The Great Influenza is John M.

Both dig into public health.

04

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Siddhartha Mukherjee · Science

The Emperor of All Maladies is Siddhartha Mukherjee's account of cancer from antiquity to the present — its biology, its treatments, its false dawns, and the scientists and patients caught in the middle of each.

A kindred science read.

05

Bad Science

Ben Goldacre · Science

Bad Science is Ben Goldacre's dissection of how scientific evidence gets misrepresented, distorted, and invented in the service of selling health products, generating media coverage, and protecting bad actors from accountability.

Both dig into public health.

06

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

William McDonough & Michael Braungart · Science

Cradle to Cradle is William McDonough and Michael Braungart's argument that the conventional approach to environmentalism — reducing, reusing, recycling, being "less bad" — is insufficient and in some ways misleading.

Both dig into ecology.

07

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures

Merlin Sheldrake · Science

Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist who has spent his career studying fungi, and Entangled Life is his account of what fungi are, what they do, and why most people who think they know something about the natural world understand almost nothing about this kingdom of life.

Both dig into ecology.

08

Fast Food Nation

Eric Schlosser · Science

Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation is one of the most consequential pieces of American investigative journalism of the early twenty-first century.

Both dig into public health.

09

Salt Sugar Fat

Michael Moss · Science

Michael Moss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, spent four years inside the processed food industry to produce Salt Sugar Fat.

Both dig into public health.

10

Silent Spring

Rachel Carson · Science

Silent Spring, published in 1962, is Rachel Carson's investigation of the effects of synthetic pesticides — particularly DDT and related organochlorines — on birds, fish, insects, and the broader ecological web.

Both dig into ecology.

11

The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction

David Quammen · Science

The Song of the Dodo is David Quammen's magnum opus on island biogeography — the science of how species are distributed across isolated habitats and why islands, both literal and metaphorical, are where extinction concentrates.

Both dig into ecology.

12

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Charles C. Mann · History

Charles Mann's 1491 sets out to correct a widespread misconception: that the Americas before Columbus were a mostly empty wilderness populated by small, isolated bands of hunter-gatherers living in gentle harmony with an untouched nature.

Both dig into ecology.