Author: R. Darryl Fisher Publisher: iUniverse ISBN: 0595001726 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 398
Book Description
The Plague Merchants describes the horrifying feasibility of a genetically engineered virus, formed from AIDS and influenza, that creates a doomsday weapon. If unleashed in a crowded subway, the resulting plague can sweep across the country, spread by airborne contagion, annihilating every other person. The creator of this weapon of mass destruction is the world-renowned and enigmatic molecular biologist Michelle Exeter, cloistered in a testing facility of the Neogenics biotechnology company in the Texas Hill Country. Her clandestine biological-weapons research is underwritten by covert Defense Department funds funneled through United States Senator Prentiss Standridge and company CEO Charles Dunn. A delirious Hispanic, found wandering the roadside near the research laboratory, is rescued by two policemen. His death in the local ER from fulminant lung hemorrhage mystifies physician Hector Morales, and he solicits the aid of Dr. Betty Freeman, a Neogenics director, in identifying the cause of death. Within 72 hours one of the policemen exposed to the Hispanic dies a similar death, asphyxiating from hemorrhage into his lungs, confirming its infectiousness. When the scientific director of the company discovers the scope of viral-weapons production he is brutally silenced, his death made to appear a suicide. Then Chairman of the board, Nobel laureate Hadley Thorne, promptly disappears after his visit to the Hill Country research laboratory to shut down the illicit viral-weapons program. Dr. Freeman tenaciously pursues the mystery of these deaths and disappearances, suffering the disbelief of her family and police when she accuses Dr. Michelle Exeter of developing a viral-warfare weapon. Dr. Exeter, realizing that soon her life's work will be exposed by Betty Freeman and that she will be disarmed by the authorities, rushes to release her deadly recombinant virus in retribution for the Gulf-War attack by the United States that killed her unborn child and her mother. Only Betty Freeman can prevent the impending viral epidemic that would wipe out half the United States as the authorities refuse to believe her Cassandra warnings. In a race against the clock, Betty chases Michelle and her engineer father, Abdel Azziz, from Texas to Washington, DC where Michelle plans to release her deadly air-borne virus at the Washington Mall during the July 4th festivities. In a standoff of biblical proportions, Betty confronts Michelle in the Metrorail-subway station beneath the crowded Mall.
Author: Joanne Dahme Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com ISBN: 1458779734 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 250
Book Description
Fifteen year-old Nell bears an uncanny resemblance to King Edward the Third's daughter, Princess Joan. The king brings Nell and her brother George from the murky streets of 14th-century London so that Nell can be the body double for the princess in times of danger. When the plague takes the princess' life, Joan's brother, the Black Prince, forces Nell to continue in her role so he can marry her to the Prince of Castille in Joan's place. Nell, however, is determined to return to England to report the princess' death to the King.
Author: James Belich Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691219168 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 640
Book Description
A groundbreaking history of how the Black Death unleashed revolutionary change across the medieval world and ushered in the modern age In 1346, a catastrophic plague beset Europe and its neighbours. The Black Death was a human tragedy that abruptly halved entire populations and caused untold suffering, but it also brought about a cultural and economic renewal on a scale never before witnessed. The World the Plague Made is a panoramic history of how the bubonic plague revolutionized labour, trade, and technology and set the stage for Europe’s global expansion. James Belich takes readers across centuries and continents to shed new light on one of history’s greatest paradoxes. Why did Europe’s dramatic rise begin in the wake of the Black Death? Belich shows how plague doubled the per capita endowment of everything even as it decimated the population. Many more people had disposable incomes. Demand grew for silks, sugar, spices, furs, gold, and slaves. Europe expanded to satisfy that demand—and plague provided the means. Labour scarcity drove more use of waterpower, wind power, and gunpowder. Technologies like water-powered blast furnaces, heavily gunned galleons, and musketry were fast-tracked by plague. A new “crew culture” of “disposable males” emerged to man the guns and galleons. Setting the rise of Western Europe in global context, Belich demonstrates how the mighty empires of the Middle East and Russia also flourished after the plague, and how European expansion was deeply entangled with the Chinese and other peoples throughout the world.
Author: Norman F. Cantor Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1476797749 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
The Black Death was the fourteenth century's equivalent of a nuclear war. It wiped out one-third of Europe's population, taking millions of lives. The author draws together the most recent scientific discoveries and historical research to pierce the mist and tell the story of the Black Death as a gripping, intimate narrative.
Author: Christopher I. Beckwith Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400829941 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 506
Book Description
An epic account of the rise and fall of the Silk Road empires The first complete history of Central Eurasia from ancient times to the present day, Empires of the Silk Road represents a fundamental rethinking of the origins, history, and significance of this major world region. Christopher Beckwith describes the rise and fall of the great Central Eurasian empires, including those of the Scythians, Attila the Hun, the Turks and Tibetans, and Genghis Khan and the Mongols. In addition, he explains why the heartland of Central Eurasia led the world economically, scientifically, and artistically for many centuries despite invasions by Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Chinese, and others. In retelling the story of the Old World from the perspective of Central Eurasia, Beckwith provides a new understanding of the internal and external dynamics of the Central Eurasian states and shows how their people repeatedly revolutionized Eurasian civilization. Beckwith recounts the Indo-Europeans' migration out of Central Eurasia, their mixture with local peoples, and the resulting development of the Graeco-Roman, Persian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations; he details the basis for the thriving economy of premodern Central Eurasia, the economy's disintegration following the region's partition by the Chinese and Russians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the damaging of Central Eurasian culture by Modernism; and he discusses the significance for world history of the partial reemergence of Central Eurasian nations after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Empires of the Silk Road places Central Eurasia within a world historical framework and demonstrates why the region is central to understanding the history of civilization.
Author: Nükhet Varlik Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107013380 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 355
Book Description
This is the first systematic scholarly study of the Ottoman experience of plague during the Black Death pandemic and the centuries that followed. Using a wealth of archival and narrative sources, including medical treatises, hagiographies, and travelers' accounts, as well as recent scientific research, Nükhet Varlik demonstrates how plague interacted with the environmental, social, and political structures of the Ottoman Empire from the late medieval through the early modern era. The book argues that the empire's growth transformed the epidemiological patterns of plague by bringing diverse ecological zones into interaction and by intensifying the mobilities of exchange among both human and non-human agents. Varlik maintains that persistent plagues elicited new forms of cultural imagination and expression, as well as a new body of knowledge about the disease. In turn, this new consciousness sharpened the Ottoman administrative response to the plague, while contributing to the makings of an early modern state.
Author: Robert S. Gottfried Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1439118469 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 228
Book Description
A fascinating work of detective history, The Black Death traces the causes and far-reaching consequences of this infamous outbreak of plague that spread across the continent of Europe from 1347 to 1351. Drawing on sources as diverse as monastic manuscripts and dendrochronological studies (which measure growth rings in trees), historian Robert S. Gottfried demonstrates how a bacillus transmitted by rat fleas brought on an ecological reign of terror -- killing one European in three, wiping out entire villages and towns, and rocking the foundation of medieval society and civilization.
Author: Benjamin Jacob Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 168
Book Description
Pathogens cause disease. This is well known. Less well known is the role humans play in causing pandemics. Interweaving contemporary accounts and the latest medical research, Plague Merchants goes beyond statistics and scientific analysis to bring the tragic human cost of each pandemic vividly to life. Considering a range of pandemics including The Black Death, cholera, Spanish Flu, HIV, malaria, and the often ignored cardiovascular pandemic (responsible for nearly 18 million deaths every year), this gripping study reveals the patterns of human behaviour which turn epidemics into pandemics and asks what lessons must be learnt from the past to prevent the next catastrophic plague.
Author: Ruifu Yang Publisher: Springer ISBN: 9402408908 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 397
Book Description
This book addresses nearly every aspect of Y. pestis, approaching it from a new perspective. Topics covered include the history, epidemiology, physiology, ecology, genome, evolution, pathogenesis, host-pathogen interaction, big-data-driven research, vaccines, clinical aspects and future research trends. For centuries, scientists have sought to determine where Y. pestis, the most well-known bacterium and one that has caused a number of high-mortality epidemics throughout human history, comes from, what it is and how it causes the disease. This book works to answer these questions with the help of cutting-edge research results. It not only describes the history of plagues, but also stresses plagues’ effects on human civilization and explores the interaction of Y. pestis with hosts, vectors and the environment to reveal the evolution and pathogenesis. The book offers a valuable guide for researchers and graduate students studying Y. pestis, and will also benefit researchers from other fields, such as infectious diseases, other pathogens and system biology, sharing key insights into bacterial pathogen studies.
Author: R. Darryl Fisher
Author: Joanne Dahme
Author: James Belich
Author: Ole Jørgen Benedictow
Author: Norman F. Cantor
Author: Christopher I. Beckwith
Author: Nükhet Varlik
Author: Robert S. Gottfried
Author: Benjamin Jacob
Author: Ruifu Yang