A History of the World in Six Plagues : How Contagion, Class and Captivity Shape Us, from Cholera to Covid-19

Author: Edna Bonhomme

Social & cultural history

Published on 12 March 2026 by John Murray Press (Dialogue Books) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 320 pages
196 x 129 x 23 | 226g

A History of the World in Six Plagues unveils a powerful and unsettling truth: epidemic diseases enter the world by chance, but they become catastrophic by human design.

'If everyone read Edna Bonhomme's incredible, humane, insightful book - and I hope they do - we might stand a chance' Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of An Immense WorldIn this groundbreaking work, Bonhomme explores how six pivotal diseases - Cholera, HIV/AIDS, the Spanish Flu, Sleeping Sickness, Ebola and COVID-19 - have shaped the trajectory of human history. Through vivid storytelling and rigorous research, she reveals how pandemics have consistently widened the gaps in racial, economic and sociopolitical divides, from the slave ships of the Atlantic to today's fractured healthcare systems.

How did a colonial obsession with sugar amplify the devastation of Cholera? Why did sleeping sickness become a weapon of empire in Tanzania? And how has COVID-19 magnified inequities in our modern, interconnected world?Bonhomme's incisive analysis transforms our understanding of public health, not as a neutral force but as a stage where power, policy and prejudice collide. Urgent and illuminating, A History of the World in Six Plagues is not just a history of disease, it is a call to reimagine a more equitable future in the face of ongoing global health challenges.

'Fascinating and thought-provoking' Jonathan Kennedy, author of Pathogenesis: How Germs Made History'Tender as it tackles some of the most stigmatized subjects of our time' Morgan Jenkins, author of Wandering in Strange Lands