First published 2021
Contagion shapes human experience far beyond medicine. Béatrice Delaurenti examines how transmission works across history, from antiquity through the present day. She treats contagion as both physical reality and cultural force, exploring how ideas, behaviors, and phenomena spread through societies. Her approach is encyclopedic, moving alphabetically from aluminum contamination to textual influence through plagiarism and imitation. The book analyzes diverse cases: anti-Semitism's propagation, migration patterns, nuclear pollution, and the brutality of China's Red Guards. Delaurenti also investigates subtler transmissions like waltz fever in post-Revolutionary Paris, the power of suggestion, how reading affects impressionable minds, and why yawning spreads. Working with fellow researchers from Paris's Center for Historical Research, she applies two methods: examining how past societies understood contagion, and using contagion as a lens for interpreting historical events. This dual perspective reveals hidden connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena and illuminates the invisible networks through which influence travels across time and space.
Genres: history, social-science, sociology, non-fiction, academic, cultural-studies
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: dual-perspective, encyclopedic
Setting: Paris, Center for Historical Research
Period: Antiquity, Present Day
360 pages · Hardcover · The MIT Press