Did Christopher Columbus really bring a new strain of syphilis to Europe? What do the Lewis family's child and the eleventh president of the United States have in common? Are tuberculosis and vampires connected? Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen's book is a captivating, illustrated history of infectious disease epidemics: how they emerge, how they spread, what makes them diagnosable, and how we rush to eradicate them before they destroy us. Plague, smallpox, leprosy, typhus, rabies, measles, anthrax, hepatitis, Ebola, HIV, coronavirus—how successfully has humanity coped with these diseases, and is there a chance of defeating them once and for all?