Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
Jennifer Wright
2017, 310 pages
Nonfiction
Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them, is a surprisingly funny book, despite its grim subject matter. Structured in chronological order, the book covers some of the most dreaded epidemics endured by mankind, from the Antonine Plague, which crippled the Roman Empire, to the HIV/AIDS epidemic of today. It also covers the people behind the plagues – individuals who struggled valiantly to treat those afflicted and those who just ended up making things much, much worse.
Get Well Soon is a delightful (if a bit morbid), quick read. Jennifer Wright, author of It Ended Badly: Thirteen of The Worst Break-Ups in History, pens an impressively-researched book. Get Well Soon is filled with dry, irreverent humor and structured sequentially, with well-defined chapters, making it a fun, highly readable book.
For an added bonus, check out the audiobook version on Libby/Overdrive, where Gabra Zackman narrates. Ms. Zackman is an excellent narrator and nicely conveys Jennifer Wright’s humor throughout the book. One of the audiobook’s few drawbacks is that it lacks Ms. Wright’s amusing images/captions – one of my favorites being in reference to the Dancing Plague of 1518, with an image of the painting, Dancing at Molenbeek, with the caption, “The Reverend in Footloose was right: Dancing kills.”
Amy Schleifer Concord Public Library
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