Interweaving history, original reportage, and personal narrative, Pandemic explores the origins of epidemics, drawing parallels between the story of cholera--one of history's most disruptive and deadly pathogens--and the new pathogens that stalk humankind today.

Cholera's child : the microbes' comeback -- The jump : crossing the species barrier at wet markets, pig farms, and South Asian wetlands -- Locomotion : the global dissemination of pathogens through canals, steamships, and jet airplanes -- Filth : the rising tide of feculence, from nineteenth-century New York City to the slums of Port-au-Prince and the factory farms of south China -- Crowds : the amplification of epidemics in the global metropolis -- Corruption : private interests versus public health, or, How Aaron Burr and the Manhattan Company poisoned New York City with cholera -- Blame : cholera riots, AIDS denialism, and vaccine resistance -- The cure : the suppression of John Snow and the limits of biomedicine -- The revenge of the sea : the cholera paradigm -- The logic of pandemics : the lost history of ancient pandemics -- Tracking the next contagion : reimagining our place in a microbial world.