"Beyond their impact on public health, epidemics shape and are shaped by political, economic, and social forces. This book examines this connection, exploring key topics in the study of disease outbreaks and delving deep into specific historical and contemporary examples"-- Provided by publisher.

Volume 1. A look inside: pathogens and the human body -- Gateways for pathogens: sources, hosts, vectors, and contracting disease -- Outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics -- Confronting infectious disease: before germ theory -- Battles against infectious disease: triumph of germ theory -- Epidemic disease in the twenty-first century -- Economics and epidemic disease -- Governments, politics, and plagues -- Religion, magic, and epidemic disease -- War and epidemics -- Colonialism, slavery, racism, and epidemic disease -- Sex and epidemic disease -- Media and epidemics from Gutenberg to AIDS -- Disease in the literary, visual, and performing arts. Volume 2. Malaria in ancient Rome -- First plague pandemic, 541-747 -- Smallpox epidemic in Japan, 735-737 -- Leprosy in medieval Europe -- The Black Death begins: the second plague pandemic, 1346-1352 -- Epidemcis in sixteenth-century America -- "French disease" in sixteenth-century Europe -- Epidemics and the Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 -- Plague in Italian cities, 1630s -- Epidemics in China, 1635-1644 -- Plague in London, 1665 -- Plague in Marseille, 1720-1722 -- Smallpox in Boston, 1721 -- Smallpox in eighteenth-century Europe -- Plague in Moscow, 1771 -- Yellow fever in Hispaniola, 1793-1804 -- Yellow fever in Philadelphia, 1793 -- Epidemics in the Napoleonic Wars, 1797-1815 -- Consumption in the nineteenth century -- First cholera pandemic, 1817-1824 -- Second cholera pandemic, 1827-1835 -- Third cholera pandemic, 1839-1856 -- Typhoid fever in cities, 1850-1920 -- Yellow fever in New Orleans, 1853 -- Fourth cholera pandemic, 1863-1875 -- Smallpox in Europe, 1870-1875 -- Measles in Fiji, 1875 -- Fifth cholera pandemic, 1881-1896 -- Influenza pandemic, 1889-1893 -- Cholera epidemic in Hamburg, 1892 -- Third plague pandemic, 1894-? -- Sixth cholera pandemic, 1899-1923 -- Sleeping sickness in East Central Africa, 1900-1905 -- Typhoid Mary's "epidemics," 1906-1915 -- Pneumonic plague epidemic in Manchuria, 1910-1911 -- Cholera epidemic in Naples, 1910-1911 -- Poliomyelitis in the United States, 1916 -- Influenza pandemic, 1918-1919 -- Poliomyelitis in the United States, 1945-1955 -- Seventh cholera pandemic, 1961- -- Contemporary HIV/AIDS pandemic, 1980- -- The mad cow crisis and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, 1985- -- Contemporary malaria -- Contemporary tuberculosis -- SARS epidemic, East Asia, 2002-2003 -- "Asian flu" (H1N1) epidemic, Asia, 2009-2010 -- MERS epidemic, Middle East, 2012-? -- Ebola virus epidemic, West Africa, 2013-2016 -- Pneumonic plague epidemic, Madagascar, 2014-2017 -- Zika virus epidemic, Latin America and the Caribbean, 2015-2017 -- Cholera epidemic, Yemen, 2017-? -- Contemporary measles outbreaks, United States.