Download or read book The Plague Year written by Lawrence Wright and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Looming Tower, and the pandemic novel The End of October: an unprecedented, momentous account of Covid-19—its origins, its wide-ranging repercussions, and the ongoing global fight to contain it "A book of panoramic breadth ... managing to surprise us about even those episodes we … thought we knew well … [With] lively exchanges about spike proteins and nonpharmaceutical interventions and disease waves, Wright’s storytelling dexterity makes all this come alive.” —The New York Times Book Review From the fateful first moments of the outbreak in China to the storming of the U.S. Capitol to the extraordinary vaccine rollout, Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year tells the story of Covid-19 in authoritative, galvanizing detail and with the full drama of events on both a global and intimate scale, illuminating the medical, economic, political, and social ramifications of the pandemic. Wright takes us inside the CDC, where a first round of faulty test kits lost America precious time . . . inside the halls of the White House, where Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger’s early alarm about the virus was met with confounding and drastically costly skepticism . . . into a Covid ward in a Charlottesville hospital, with an idealistic young woman doctor from the town of Little Africa, South Carolina . . . into the precincts of prediction specialists at Goldman Sachs . . . into Broadway’s darkened theaters and Austin’s struggling music venues . . . inside the human body, diving deep into the science of how the virus and vaccines function—with an eye-opening detour into the history of vaccination and of the modern anti-vaccination movement. And in this full accounting, Wright makes clear that the medical professionals around the country who’ve risked their lives to fight the virus reveal and embody an America in all its vulnerability, courage, and potential. In turns steely-eyed, sympathetic, infuriated, unexpectedly comical, and always precise, Lawrence Wright is a formidable guide, slicing through the dense fog of misinformation to give us a 360-degree portrait of the catastrophe we thought we knew.

Download or read book Snakehead written by Peter May and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2009-12 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the fourth of Peter May's acclaimed China Thrillers, American pathologist Margaret Campbell finds herself back on home soil, only to be faced by a truck full of dead Chinese and an unavoidable confrontation with her past. Beijing detective Li Yan, now based at the Chinese embassy in Washington, is dispatched to find out how his fellow countrymen suffocated in a sealed refrigeration unit in southern Texas - only to find himself face-to-face with the woman who walked out of China, and his life, to return to the U.S. Tasked to work together again to find out who is behind the $100 million trade in illegal Chinese immigrants which led to the tragedy in Texas, they discover that the immigrants were unwitting carriers of a deadly cargo. And still wrestling with the demons of their pasts, Li and Margaret find themselves racing against time to defuse a biological time-bomb that threatens to wipe out not only their future, but that of humankind.

Download or read book Shutdown written by Adam Tooze and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book’s great service is that it challenges us to consider the ways in which our institutions and systems, and the assumptions, positions and divisions that undergird them, leave us ill prepared for the next crisis."—Robert Rubin, The New York Times Book Review "Full of valuable insight and telling details, this may well be the best thing to read if you want to know what happened in 2020." --Paul Krugman, New York Review of Books Deftly weaving finance, politics, business, and the global human experience into one tight narrative, a tour-de-force account of 2020, the year that changed everything--from the acclaimed author of Crashed. The shocks of 2020 have been great and small, disrupting the world economy, international relations and the daily lives of virtually everyone on the planet. Never before has the entire world economy contracted by 20 percent in a matter of weeks nor in the historic record of modern capitalism has there been a moment in which 95 percent of the world's economies were suffering all at the same time. Across the world hundreds of millions have lost their jobs. And over it all looms the specter of pandemic, and death. Adam Tooze, whose last book was universally lauded for guiding us coherently through the chaos of the 2008 crash, now brings his bravura analytical and narrative skills to a panoramic and synthetic overview of our current crisis. By focusing on finance and business, he sets the pandemic story in a frame that casts a sobering new light on how unprepared the world was to fight the crisis, and how deep the ruptures in our way of living and doing business are. The virus has attacked the economy with as much ferocity as it has our health, and there is no vaccine arriving to address that. Tooze's special gift is to show how social organization, political interests, and economic policy interact with devastating human consequences, from your local hospital to the World Bank. He moves fluidly from the impact of currency fluctuations to the decimation of institutions--such as health-care systems, schools, and social services--in the name of efficiency. He starkly analyzes what happened when the pandemic collided with domestic politics (China's party conferences; the American elections), what the unintended consequences of the vaccine race might be, and the role climate change played in the pandemic. Finally, he proves how no unilateral declaration of 'independence" or isolation can extricate any modern country from the global web of travel, goods, services, and finance.

Download or read book Lockdown written by Peter May and published by Quercus Books. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'They said that twenty-five percent of the population would catch the flu. Between seventy and eighty percent of them would die. He had been directly exposed to it, and the odds weren't good.' A CITY IN QUARANTINE London, the epicenter of a global pandemic, is a city in lockdown. Violence and civil disorder simmer. Martial law has been imposed. No-one is safe from the deadly virus that has already claimed thousands of victims. Health and emergency services are overwhelmed. A MURDERED CHILD At a building site for a temporary hospital, construction workers find a bag containing the rendered bones of a murdered child. A remorseless killer has been unleashed on the city; his mission is to take all measures necessary to prevent the bones from being identified. A POWERFUL CONSPIRACY D.I. Jack MacNeil, counting down the hours on his final day with the Met, is sent to investigate. His career is in ruins, his marriage over and his own family touched by the virus. Sinister forces are tracking his every move, prepared to kill again to conceal the truth. Which will stop him first - the virus or the killers? Written over fifteen years ago, this prescient, suspenseful thriller is set against a backdrop of a capital city in quarantine, and explores human experience in the grip of a killer virus.

Download or read book Pandemics Insurance and Social Protection written by María del Carmen Boado-Penas and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book collects expert contributions on actuarial modelling and related topics, from machine learning to legal aspects, and reflects on possible insurance designs during an epidemic/pandemic. Starting by considering the impulse given by COVID-19 to the insurance industry and to actuarial research, the text covers compartment models, mortality changes during a pandemic, risk-sharing in the presence of low probability events, group testing, compositional data analysis for detecting data inconsistencies, behaviouristic aspects in fighting a pandemic, and insurers' legal problems, amongst others. Concluding with an essay by a practicing actuary on the applicability of the methods proposed, this interdisciplinary book is aimed at actuaries as well as readers with a background in mathematics, economics, statistics, finance, epidemiology, or sociology.

Download or read book American Contagions written by John Fabian Witt and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-31 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A concise history of how American law has shaped—and been shaped by—the experience of contagion“Contrarians and the civic-minded alike will find Witt’s legal survey a fascinating resource”—Kirkus, starred review “Professor Witt’s book is an original and thoughtful contribution to the interdisciplinary study of disease and American law. Although he covers the broad sweep of the American experience of epidemics from yellow fever to COVID-19, he is especially timely in his exploration of the legal background to the current disaster of the American response to the coronavirus. A thought-provoking, readable, and important work.”—Frank Snowden, author of Epidemics and Society From yellow fever to smallpox to polio to AIDS to COVID-19, epidemics have prompted Americans to make choices and answer questions about their basic values and their laws. In five concise chapters, historian John Fabian Witt traces the legal history of epidemics, showing how infectious disease has both shaped, and been shaped by, the law. Arguing that throughout American history legal approaches to public health have been liberal for some communities and authoritarian for others, Witt shows us how history’s answers to the major questions brought up by previous epidemics help shape our answers today: What is the relationship between individual liberty and the common good? What is the role of the federal government, and what is the role of the states? Will long-standing traditions of government and law give way to the social imperatives of an epidemic? Will we let the inequities of our mixed tradition continue?

Download or read book International Health Regulations 2005 written by World Health Organization and published by World Health Organization. This book was released on 2008-12-15 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In response to the call of the 48th World Health Assembly for a substantial revision of the International Health Regulations, this new edition of the Regulations will enter into force on June 15, 2007. The purpose and scope of the Regulations are "to prevent, protect against, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease in ways that are commensurate with and restricted to public health risks, and which avoid unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade." The Regulations also cover certificates applicable to international travel and transport, and requirements for international ports, airports and ground crossings.

Download or read book Economic Policy for a Pandemic Age written by Monica de Bolle and published by Peterson Institute for International Economics. This book was released on 2021-04-05 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global health and economic threats from the COVID-19 pandemic are not yet behind us. While the development of multiple safe and highly effective vaccines in less than a year is cause for hope, several significant dangers to recovery of global health and income are still clear and present: New concerning variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, continue to emerge at an alarming rate in different parts of the world; at the same time, vaccine rollouts have been shockingly inefficient even in some rich countries, while much of the developing world waits in line behind them for vaccines to arrive. The Briefing covers several policy areas in which cooperative forward-looking policy action will materially improve our chances of truly escaping today's pandemic and making future pandemics less costly.

Download or read book How Not to Become a Crotchety Old Man written by Mary McHugh and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Good things come in small sizes. That is so true, especially for How Not to Become a Crotchety Old Man. Big on fun and filled with hilarious insights about how not to let our inner crotchety old man out, this one makes the perfect Father's Day gift. Men will learn how to age gracefully so they never rattle off an inappropriate "dirty old man" joke. They'll learn that reading the obits first is a cardinal sin and that never reading the instructions is a close second.

Download or read book Asia Bond Monitor September 2020 written by Asian Development Bank and published by Asian Development Bank. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication reviews recent developments in East Asian local currency bond markets along with the outlook, risks, and policy options. It covers the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the People’s Republic of China; Hong Kong, China; and the Republic of Korea.

Download or read book The Man With No Face written by Peter May and published by Quercus. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are two men on their way to Brussels from the UK: Neil Bannerman, an iconoclastic journalist for Scotland's Daily Standard whose irate editor wants him out of the way, and Kale--a professional assassin. A classic early Peter May novel situated among the political intrigue of 1979. Expecting to find only a difficult, dreary political investigation in Belgium, Bannerman has barely settled in when tragedy strikes. His host, a fellow journalist, along with a British Cabinet minister, are discovered dead in the minister's elegant Brussels townhouse. It appears that they have shot each other. But the dead journalist's young autistic daughter, Tania, was hidden in a closet during the killings, and when she draws a chilling picture of a third party--a man with no face--Bannerman suddenly finds himself a reluctant participant in a desperate murder investigation. As the facts slowly begin to emerge under Bannerman's scrutiny, he comes to suspect that the shootings may have a deep and foul link with the rotten politics that brought him to Brussels in the first place. And as Kale threatens to strike again, Bannerman begins to feel a change within himself. His jaded professionalism is transforming into a growing concern for the lonely and frightened Tania, and a strong attraction to a courageous woman named Sally--drawing him out of himself and into the very heart of a profound, cold-blooded, and infinitely dangerous conspiracy. "Peter May is a writer I'd follow to the ends of the earth." --Marilyn Stasio, New York Times

Download or read book Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-01-27 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A respected resource for decades, the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals has been updated by a committee of experts, taking into consideration input from the scientific and laboratory animal communities and the public at large. The Guide incorporates new scientific information on common laboratory animals, including aquatic species, and includes extensive references. It is organized around major components of animal use: Key concepts of animal care and use. The Guide sets the framework for the humane care and use of laboratory animals. Animal care and use program. The Guide discusses the concept of a broad Program of Animal Care and Use, including roles and responsibilities of the Institutional Official, Attending Veterinarian and the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. Animal environment, husbandry, and management. A chapter on this topic is now divided into sections on terrestrial and aquatic animals and provides recommendations for housing and environment, husbandry, behavioral and population management, and more. Veterinary care. The Guide discusses veterinary care and the responsibilities of the Attending Veterinarian. It includes recommendations on animal procurement and transportation, preventive medicine (including animal biosecurity), and clinical care and management. The Guide addresses distress and pain recognition and relief, and issues surrounding euthanasia. Physical plant. The Guide identifies design issues, providing construction guidelines for functional areas; considerations such as drainage, vibration and noise control, and environmental monitoring; and specialized facilities for animal housing and research needs. The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals provides a framework for the judgments required in the management of animal facilities. This updated and expanded resource of proven value will be important to scientists and researchers, veterinarians, animal care personnel, facilities managers, institutional administrators, policy makers involved in research issues, and animal welfare advocates.

Download or read book The Ring of Truth written by Roger Scruton and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2016-06-09 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The ideal interpreter of the Ring ... a fascinating and valuable study ... absorbing and convincing' Sunday Times The Ring of the Nibelung is one of the greatest works of art created in modern times. Roger Scruton's brilliant and passionate exploration of the drama, music, symbolism and philosophy of Wagner's masterpiece - with its themes of love, death, sacrifice and freedom - shows how, ultimately, it expresses the truth about the human condition. 'Highly original and penetrating ... tremendous' Tim Blanning, Literary Review 'A rich, historical account ... After reading this book, only the most unadventurous reader would turn down the chance to see Wagner's masterpiece' Economist 'A brilliant gallop through the master's religious, musical and philosophical contexts' Sue Prideaux, Spectator 'Scruton is one of the finest philosopher-musicians since Schopenhauer' Jonathan Gaisman, Standpoint

Download or read book Susan Linda Nina Cokie written by Lisa Napoli and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A group biography of four beloved women who fought sexism, covered decades of American news, and whose voices defined NPR In the years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, women in the workplace still found themselves relegated to secretarial positions or locked out of jobs entirely. This was especially true in the news business, a backwater of male chauvinism where a woman might be lucky to get a foothold on the “women’s pages.” But when a pioneering nonprofit called National Public Radio came along in the 1970s, and the door to serious journalism opened a crack, four remarkable women came along and blew it off the hinges. Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie is journalist Lisa Napoli’s captivating account of these four women, their deep and enduring friendships, and the trail they blazed to becoming icons. They had radically different stories. Cokie Roberts was born into a political dynasty, roamed the halls of Congress as a child, and felt a tug toward public service. Susan Stamberg, who had lived in India with her husband who worked for the State Department, was the first woman to anchor a nightly news program and pressed for accommodations to balance work and home life. Linda Wertheimer, the daughter of shopkeepers in New Mexico, fought her way to a scholarship and a spot on-air. And Nina Totenberg, the network's legal affairs correspondent, invented a new way to cover the Supreme Court. Based on extensive interviews and calling on the author’s deep connections in news and public radio, Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie will be as beguiling and sharp as its formidable subjects.

Download or read book Thy Neighbor s Wife written by Gay Talese and published by Harper Perennial. This book was released on 2009-04-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The provocative classic work newly updated An intimate personal odyssey across America's changing sexual landscape When first published, Gay Talese's 1981 groundbreaking work, Thy Neighbor's Wife, shocked a nation with its powerful, eye-opening revelations about the sexual activities and proclivities of the American public in the era before AIDS. A marvel of journalistic courage and craft, the book opened a window into a new world built on a new moral foundation, carrying the reader on a remarkable journey from the Playboy Mansion to the Supreme Court, to the backyards and bedrooms of suburbia—through the development of the porn industry, the rise of the "swinger" culture, the legal fight to define obscenity, and the daily sex lives of "ordinary" people. It is the book that forever changed the way Americans look at themselves and one another.

Download or read book History of Vaccine Development written by Stanley A. Plotkin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-05-11 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vaccinology, the concept of a science ranging from the study of immunology to the development and distribution of vaccines, was a word invented by Jonas Salk. This book covers the history of the methodological progress in vaccine development and to the social and ethical issues raised by vaccination. Chapters include "Jenner and the Vaccination against Smallpox," "Viral Vaccines," and "Ethical and Social Aspects of vaccines." Contributing authors include pioneers in the field, such as Samuel L. Katz and Hilary Koprowski. This history of vaccines is relatively short and many of its protagonists are still alive. This book was written by some of the chief actors in the drama whose subject matter is the conquest of epidemic disease.

Download or read book Predictive Sentencing written by Jan W de Keijser and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-16 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Predictive Sentencing addresses the role of risk assessment in contemporary sentencing practices. Predictive sentencing has become so deeply ingrained in Western criminal justice decision-making that despite early ethical discussions about selective incapacitation, it currently attracts little critique. Nor has it been subjected to a thorough normative and empirical scrutiny. This is problematic since much current policy and practice concerning risk predictions is inconsistent with mainstream theories of punishment. Moreover, predictive sentencing exacerbates discrimination and disparity in sentencing. Although structured risk assessments may have replaced 'gut feelings', and have now been systematically implemented in Western justice systems, the fundamental issues and questions that surround the use of risk assessment instruments at sentencing remain unresolved. This volume critically evaluates these issues and will be of great interest to scholars of criminal justice and criminology.