This book begins with the Bubonic Plague that hit London in 1665-1666 that Daniel Defoe described in Journal of a Plague Year, written so many years after the actual event.

The Spanish Flu of 1918-1919 has been described by a variety of writers including Katherine Anne Porter and Thomas Wolfe.

More recently AIDS, Ebola and Covid-19 have been covered, as journalists would say, by Randy Shilts, Richard Preston and Lawrence Wright.

There are graphic and horrific stories here about illnesses and deaths during the plagues of the past, and, in the case of Covid-19, the plague that is with us still.