The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy [Hardcover]

Lively, informative ...offers wide-ranging evidence of alternative frameworks for disease. Science

Allows readers to practically experience firsthand how humans have adapted to and dealt with disease throughout history...necessary and timely...engaging and entertaining. Highly recommended. Library Journal, starred

[A] splendid examination...Deeply insightful if unsettling. Kirkus

Anti-science, anti-vaccine, anti-reason beliefs seem to be triumphing over common sense today. How did we get here?The Great Shadowbrings a huge missing piece to this puzzlethe experience of actually being ill. What did itfeellike to be a woman or man struggling with illness in ancient times, in the Middle Ages, in the seventeenth century, or in 1920? And how did that shape our thoughts and convictions?

The Great Shadowuses extensive historical research and first-person accounts to tell a vivid story about sickness and our responses to it, from very ancient times until the last decade. In the process of writing, historian Susan Wise Bauer reveals just how many of our current fads and causes are rooted in the moment-by-moment experience of sicknessfrom the search for a balanced lifestyle to plug-in air fresheners and bare hardwood floors. We cant simply shout facts at people who refuse vaccinations, believe that immigrants carry diseases, or insist that God will look out for them during a pandemic. We have to enter with imagination, historical perspective, and empathy into their world.The Great Shadowdoes just that with page-turning flair.