"A vivid account of the horror of epidemics and the breakthroughs that can bring them under control." -- Kirkus Reviews "A splendid and often moving work of history.Schama has a gift for combining novelistically colorful detail, serious analysis, and wryly amusing asides." -- Daily Telegraph (London) "Superb." -- Observer "Extraordinary. A meticulous retelling of a terrible yet scientifically innovative period. Schama makes an urgent case for building a better future on our toxic past." -- The Guardian "Gripping.
This is history of the best sort--humanly engaged but never sentimental." -- Mail on Sunday "An epic and impassioned history." -- Financial Times "A very personal and rather wonderful book." -- Literary Review "Vast, terrifying, and somehow beautiful.A masterful work of nonfiction." -- Irish Times "Insightful . Schama's wide-ranging history brings worthwhile lessons from the past to the present. Readers will be enlightened.
" -- Publishers Weekly "[An] important and inimitable book.always cautionary and sage." -- Booklist (starred review) "In his eloquent, discursive Foreign Bodies, the art historian and Europhile turns his colossal erudition to pandemics and the women and men who transformed our understanding of them. It's just what the doctor ordered as a robust SARS CoV-2 variant surges across the globe. Foreign Bodies is sterling cultural history, but it also reminds us that political concerns mold our choices as future pandemics brew." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune "Fascinating. a sweeping social history of inoculation. Along the way, readers meet vaccination's most regular traveling companion--distrust.
" -- The Economist "Foreign Bodies is sterling cultural history, but it also reminds us that political concerns mold our choices as future pandemics brew." -- Hamilton Cain, Minneapolis Star Tribune "Fascinating. a sweeping social history of inoculation. Along the way, readers meet vaccination's most regular traveling companion--distrust." -- Economist "In Foreign Bodies, Simon Schama studies pandemics past and present, and how much -- and little -- we have learned. The appearance of yet another enthusiastic and erudite history from Simon Schama is an event always to be welcomed. The story of Waldemar Mordechai Wolff Haffkine, little told in the West beyond the world of bacteriology and within the annals of Judaica, is thrilling in its nobility and verve. Schama's central character proves an irresistible enchantment.
" -- New York Times Book Review "[Schama] reconciles the weight of medical detail with the light-footed pleasures of narrative discovery. His book profiles some of the unsung miracle workers of modern vaccination, and offers a subtle rumination on borders political and biological." -- Wall Street Journal.