Until proven safe : the history and future of quarantine Cover Image

Book

Until proven safe : the history and future of quarantine / Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley.

Manaugh, Geoff, (author.). Twilley, Nicola, 1978- (author.).

Summary:

"Journalists Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley explore the history and future of quarantine, from the Black Death to Big Data"-- Provided by publisher.

Quarantine is our most powerful response to uncertainty: it means waiting to see if something hidden inside us will be revealed. It is also one of our most dangerous, operating through an assumption of guilt. In quarantine, we are considered infectious until proven safe. Manaugh and Twilly track the history and future of quarantine around the globe. It is a story of emergency isolation, but they also guide us through a nuclear-waste isolation facility beneath the New Mexican desert; plants stricken with a disease that threatens the world's wheat supply; and a meeting with NASA's Planetary Protection Officer, tasked with saving Earth from extraterrestrial infections. -- adapted from jacket.

Record details

ISBN: 9780374126582
ISBN: 0374126585
Physical Description: 396 pages : illustrations, maps ; 22 cm
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York : MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
Copyright: ©2021

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Encountering uncertainty. The coming quarantine -- Building quarantine. The quarantine tourist ; Postmarks from the edge ; An extraordinary power ; Alone together -- Animal, vegetable, mineral, alien. Biology at the border ; A million years of isolation ; All the planets, all the time -- Distance assistance. Algorithms of quarantine -- Epilogue: Until proven safe.