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Disease Books
Showing 1-50 of 4,207
The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus (Paperback)
by (shelved 113 times as disease)
avg rating 4.16 — 126,204 ratings — published 1994
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection (Hardcover)
by (shelved 80 times as disease)
avg rating 4.31 — 314,400 ratings — published 2025
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World (Hardcover)
by (shelved 79 times as disease)
avg rating 3.89 — 58,155 ratings — published 2006
Fever 1793 (Paperback)
by (shelved 66 times as disease)
avg rating 3.93 — 136,381 ratings — published 2000
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History (Paperback)
by (shelved 62 times as disease)
avg rating 3.98 — 43,597 ratings — published 2004
The Fault in Our Stars (Hardcover)
by (shelved 51 times as disease)
avg rating 4.12 — 5,913,509 ratings — published 2012
Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus (Hardcover)
by (shelved 50 times as disease)
avg rating 3.70 — 13,761 ratings — published 2012
The Demon in the Freezer (Paperback)
by (shelved 47 times as disease)
avg rating 4.15 — 18,925 ratings — published 2002
The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time (Paperback)
by (shelved 46 times as disease)
avg rating 3.88 — 12,465 ratings — published 2005
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (Paperback)
by (shelved 45 times as disease)
avg rating 4.42 — 21,260 ratings — published 2012
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (Hardcover)
by (shelved 43 times as disease)
avg rating 4.34 — 119,346 ratings — published 2010
The Plague (Paperback)
by (shelved 41 times as disease)
avg rating 4.02 — 337,693 ratings — published 1947
The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance (Paperback)
by (shelved 39 times as disease)
avg rating 4.22 — 10,816 ratings — published 1994
The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History (Hardcover)
by (shelved 37 times as disease)
avg rating 3.91 — 6,870 ratings — published 2006
Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them (Hardcover)
by (shelved 31 times as disease)
avg rating 4.23 — 14,648 ratings — published 2017
Station Eleven (Hardcover)
by (shelved 31 times as disease)
avg rating 4.06 — 655,810 ratings — published 2014
Year of Wonders (Paperback)
by (shelved 28 times as disease)
avg rating 4.01 — 180,891 ratings — published 2001
Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues (Hardcover)
by (shelved 26 times as disease)
avg rating 3.94 — 13,463 ratings — published 2023
Everything, Everything (Hardcover)
by (shelved 26 times as disease)
avg rating 3.95 — 693,629 ratings — published 2015
The Andromeda Strain (Andromeda, #1)
by (shelved 26 times as disease)
avg rating 3.91 — 278,163 ratings — published 1969
Flu: The Story Of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It (Paperback)
by (shelved 25 times as disease)
avg rating 3.91 — 7,706 ratings — published 1999
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Paperback)
by (shelved 24 times as disease)
avg rating 4.04 — 476,235 ratings — published 1997
Plagues and Peoples (Paperback)
by (shelved 24 times as disease)
avg rating 3.86 — 5,170 ratings — published 1976
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women (Hardcover)
by (shelved 23 times as disease)
avg rating 4.15 — 203,602 ratings — published 2016
Still Alice (Paperback)
by (shelved 23 times as disease)
avg rating 4.33 — 367,861 ratings — published 2007
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Hardcover)
by (shelved 23 times as disease)
avg rating 4.14 — 834,880 ratings — published 2010
Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World (Hardcover)
by (shelved 22 times as disease)
avg rating 3.92 — 8,364 ratings — published 2017
Choke (Paperback)
by (shelved 22 times as disease)
avg rating 3.71 — 225,402 ratings — published 2001
Going Bovine (Hardcover)
by (shelved 22 times as disease)
avg rating 3.67 — 35,411 ratings — published 2009
Moloka'i (Moloka'i, #1)
by (shelved 21 times as disease)
avg rating 4.20 — 144,297 ratings — published 2003
Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles, #1)
by (shelved 21 times as disease)
avg rating 4.12 — 1,040,497 ratings — published 2012
The Stand (Audiobook)
by (shelved 21 times as disease)
avg rating 4.35 — 869,645 ratings — published 1978
Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1)
by (shelved 20 times as disease)
avg rating 4.03 — 67,419 ratings — published 1992
Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease (Hardcover)
by (shelved 19 times as disease)
avg rating 4.14 — 9,369 ratings — published 2007
The Family that Couldn't Sleep (Hardcover)
by (shelved 18 times as disease)
avg rating 3.92 — 6,757 ratings — published 2006
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness (ebook)
by (shelved 17 times as disease)
avg rating 4.09 — 244,537 ratings — published 2012
The Woman with a Worm in Her Head: And Other True Stories of Infectious Disease (Paperback)
by (shelved 17 times as disease)
avg rating 4.06 — 3,359 ratings — published 2001
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (Paperback)
by (shelved 17 times as disease)
avg rating 4.39 — 30,127 ratings — published 1987
The Girl with All the Gifts (The Girl With All the Gifts, #1)
by (shelved 15 times as disease)
avg rating 3.95 — 251,932 ratings — published 2014
The Pull of the Stars (Hardcover)
by (shelved 15 times as disease)
avg rating 3.95 — 92,549 ratings — published 2020
Wilder Girls (Hardcover)
by (shelved 15 times as disease)
avg rating 3.44 — 103,972 ratings — published 2019
The Lost City of the Monkey God (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 15 times as disease)
avg rating 3.93 — 65,536 ratings — published 2017
Polio: An American Story (Paperback)
by (shelved 15 times as disease)
avg rating 4.06 — 6,175 ratings — published 2005
A Journal of the Plague Year (Paperback)
by (shelved 15 times as disease)
avg rating 3.55 — 12,304 ratings — published 1722
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (Hardcover)
by (shelved 15 times as disease)
avg rating 4.02 — 584,995 ratings — published 2006
Beating Back the Devil: On the Front Lines with the Disease Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (Hardcover)
by (shelved 15 times as disease)
avg rating 3.94 — 2,189 ratings — published 2004
Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe (Hardcover)
by (shelved 15 times as disease)
avg rating 3.67 — 2,588 ratings — published 2007
Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come (Hardcover)
by (shelved 14 times as disease)
avg rating 4.43 — 8,664 ratings — published 2019
Illuminae (The Illuminae Files, #1)
by (shelved 14 times as disease)
avg rating 4.23 — 165,179 ratings — published 2015
The Troop (Hardcover)
by (shelved 14 times as disease)
avg rating 3.82 — 146,992 ratings — published 2014
“Here's the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That's what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.
I want to leave a mark.
But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, "They'll remember me now," but (a) they don't remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.
...
We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it's silly and useless--epically useless in my current state--but I am an animal like any other.
Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.
People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad, Van Houten. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm.
The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.
...
But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.
...
What else? She is so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.”
― The Fault in Our Stars
I want to leave a mark.
But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, "They'll remember me now," but (a) they don't remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.
...
We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it's silly and useless--epically useless in my current state--but I am an animal like any other.
Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.
People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad, Van Houten. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm.
The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.
...
But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.
...
What else? She is so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.”
― The Fault in Our Stars
“Now I buy prostitutes instead. It's obvious as soon as I undress they'll take no pleasure earning money from me. But they need the money just like I need to rub my husk against them. And I imagine they think that they've tasted worse and have been tasted by worse.
You don't know what it means to feel my chapped, disfigured lips and cock and hands saw away at something so downy. It's inexplicable. That's why it's hard for me to talk about the fact that my disease is so contagious a little peck on the cheek is enough to almost guarantee transmission.
In a few weeks, all the prostitutes I've hired will be the last boys on earth whom anyone would pay. Not long after I'm dead, they'll be dead. Some nights I fantasize about telling them what saints they are, but I don't. Still, there are times when I almost get the feeling they know.”
―
You don't know what it means to feel my chapped, disfigured lips and cock and hands saw away at something so downy. It's inexplicable. That's why it's hard for me to talk about the fact that my disease is so contagious a little peck on the cheek is enough to almost guarantee transmission.
In a few weeks, all the prostitutes I've hired will be the last boys on earth whom anyone would pay. Not long after I'm dead, they'll be dead. Some nights I fantasize about telling them what saints they are, but I don't. Still, there are times when I almost get the feeling they know.”
―
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