All right, people, nobody panic. We’ve dealt with virulent strains of deadly viruses before, and damn it, we can do it again. All we have to do is hunker down, tape up the windows and periodically send out interns to see if it’s safe. While you’re holed up in your office or home trying to avoid God’s rind-flavored plague, you might as well catch up on some reading. Here’s a list of upbeat books to help keep your mind off this year’s plague (bird flu is so 2008):
Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson Johnson, a far-ranging thinker who once sought to prove that video games are good for you, explored the unhappy marriage of cholera and London in his book Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. Cholera is a bitch, apparently.
See some other book suggestions after the break!
The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton Crichton’s book of extraterrestrial pathogens still has the power to terrify. At least Cylons are attractive and able to mate with us—these germs are just plain ugly and aloof.
The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman It’s amazing to learn just how fast the city would deteriorate without us here to keep it awesome.
Cub Scout Webelos Handbook If you live here, you’re probably not skilled enough for the full-on Boy Scouts Handbook, but this guide for fifth- and sixth-graders should help you out in a barren, devastated world.
What We Eat When We Eat Alone, by Deborah Madison This cookbook and story collection by a renowned vegetarian author, due out May 1, should prove useful when you’re by your lonesome as the last man/woman on earth. Doubly useful because you won’t want to be eating pork, if only on principle.
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