Just as seismologists talk about the Big One, epidemiologists are alert for signs of a major pathogen — Ebola? SARS? — that could sicken as many as a billion people sometime in the next two generations. In her new book, Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, From Cholera to Ebola and Beyond, Shah, an award-winning science journalist and the author of The Fever, which chronicled the science and social impact of malaria, draws on a wide range of historians as well as cutting-edge public health experts to describe past pandemics — notably outbreaks of cholera, which emerged in 1817 as a harmless microbe, steadily evolving into a global mass-killer — study how we’ve coped, and describe what we might face next and how we can prevent it.

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