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Also by Philip Alcabes:

Dread, April 2009
Hardcover

DREAD
By: Philip Alcabes

How Fear and Fantasy have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to the Avian Flu

PublicAffairs
April 2009
On Sale: April 13, 2009
336 pages
ISBN: 1586486187
EAN: 9781586486181
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction

The average individual is far more likely to die in a car accident than from a communicable disease…yet we are still much more fearful of the epidemic. Even at our most level- headed, the thought of an epidemic can inspire terror. As Philip Alcabes persuasively argues in Dread, our anxieties about epidemics are created not so much by the germ or microbe in question—or the actual risks of contagion—but by the unknown, the undesirable, and the misunderstood. Alcabes examines epidemics through history to show how they reflect the particular social and cultural anxieties of their times. From Typhoid Mary to bioterrorism, as new outbreaks are unleashed or imagined, new fears surface, new enemies are born, and new behaviors emerge. Dread dissects the fascinating story of the imagined epidemic: the one that we think is happening, or might happen; the one that disguises moral judgments and political agendas, the one that ultimately expresses our deepest fears.

Media Buzz

Daily Show with Jon Stewart - April 22, 2009