The Plague Year
- Author Lawrence Wright
- Narrator Eric Jason Martin
- Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
- Run Time 11 hours and 30 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Health, illness and addiction: social aspects, Infectious and contagious diseases, Political science and theory, Public health and preventive medicine, Science funding and policy, Social impact of disasters.
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
'In the twenty-first century, infectious disease seemed like a nuisance, not like a mortal threat'
Just as Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower became the defining account of our century's first devastating event, 9/11, so The Plague Year will become the defining account of the second.
The story starts with the initial moments of Covid's appearance in Wuhan and ends with Joseph Biden's inauguration in an America ravaged by well over 400,000 deaths - a mortality already some ten times worse than US combat deaths in the entire Vietnam War.
This is an anguished, furious memorial to a year in which all of America's great strengths - its scientific knowledge, its great civic and intellectual institutions, its spirit of voluntarism and community - were brought low, not by a terrifying new illness alone, but by political incompetence and cynicism on a scale for which there has been no precedent.
With insight, sympathy, clarity and rage, The Plague Year allows the reader to see the unfolding of this great tragedy, talking with individuals on the front line, bringing together many moving and surprising stories and painting a devastating picture of a country literally and fatally misled.
© Lawrence Wright 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021
Critics Review
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A devastating analysis … Wright is a master of knitting together complex narratives … A story about hubris and division, complacency and insularity, but most of all precariousness.
The Observer -
In his characteristically rigorous and engrossing style, Wright documents innumerable episodes of ineptitude and malfeasance … Maddening and sobering – as comprehensive an account of the first year of the pandemic as we’ve yet seen.
Kirkus -
Wright explains political mistakes and scientific breakthroughs, but The Plague Year has a more intimate register, too, in its record of how the virus upended everyday lives. The most heartbreaking moments are those that juxtapose ordinary people falling ill with the incompetence, negligence or politicking of the Trump White House … The Plague Year suggests it was even worse than we remembered or realised at the time.
New Statesman -
A virtuoso feat … [Wright has] given us a book of panoramic breadth, [ranging] from science to politics to economics to culture with a commanding scrutiny, managing to surprise us about even those episodes we have only recently lived through and thought we knew well. The story he tells is immediate and often piercingly intimate … Wright’s storytelling dexterity makes all this come alive.
New York Times Book Review -
In his characteristic style, Mr Wright provides many small sketches of people touched by Covid-19 – from whizzy scientists like Barney Graham to victims like 96-year-old Jim Miller, a D-Day veteran who died of the disease in a cruelly mismanaged home for old soldiers. But the book’s main character is Mr Trump, and its main service is in weighing his responsibility for the disaster.
The Economist -
Arresting, lean-limbed, immersive … Rich with peerless reportage and incisive critique … Translates the complexities of epidemiology into plain English … Wright is at his commanding best.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
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