Books like The Great Influenza

01

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.

A kindred history read.

02

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.

Both dig into public health.

03

Pale Rider

Laura Spinney · History

Pale Rider is Laura Spinney's account of the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic, with a distinctive emphasis on its global dimensions and on why the event so largely disappeared from collective memory.

Shares pandemic and science history with The Great Influenza.

04

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Jared Diamond · Science

Guns, Germs, and Steel is Jared Diamond's attempt to answer a question posed to him by a Papua New Guinean politician named Yali: why did Europeans end up with so much cargo — wealth, technology, power — while other peoples had comparatively little?

A kindred history read.

05

Anatomy of an Epidemic

Robert Whitaker · Health

Anatomy of an Epidemic is Robert Whitaker's investigation into a paradox: as the use of psychiatric medication in the United States has increased dramatically over the past half-century, the number of people on disability due to mental illness has risen in parallel.

Both dig into public health.

06

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.

07

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Mary Roach · Science

Bonk is Mary Roach's investigation into the science of human sexuality — not the pop psychology of relationships, but the actual research: what scientists have done inside laboratory settings to understand how sex works, what they've discovered, and why the field has been so difficult to pursue given institutional and cultural resistance.

Both dig into medical research.

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

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

Mary Roach · Science

Gulp traces the alimentary canal from mouth to colon, using Mary Roach's standard method: firsthand visits to the researchers who work in each region, archival accounts of the stranger experiments in medical history, and a consistent willingness to ask the embarrassing questions that more decorous science writing leaves out.

Both dig into medical research.

10

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.

11

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Mary Roach · Science

Stiff follows the human body after death — through anatomy labs, crash-test facilities, forensic research farms, military ballistics testing, and the history of surgical education.

Both dig into medical research.

12

The Body: A Guide for Occupants

Bill Bryson · Science

Bill Bryson turns his signature wide-lens curiosity on the human body, covering it organ by organ, system by system, from the skin inward.

Both dig into science history.