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When people think about the bubonic plague they tend to focus on the unprecedented devastation it caused at the end of the middle ages in Europe when one in three people were killed. Not surprisingly, the history of the bubonic plague itself is much longer. These books describe the impact of the plague from the Roman Empire to the outbreak of the plague in 1900 in Hawaii and San Francisco. These books tell remarkable stories but they should also serve as a reminder at how precarious life on earth is for humankind.

This study of plague imprints, from academic medical treatises to plague poetry, highlights the most feared and devastating epidemic of the sixteenth-century, one that threatened Italy top to toe from 1575 to 1578 and unleashed an avalanche of plague writing. From erudite definitions, remote causes, cures, and recipes, physicians now directed their plague writings to the prince and discovered their most 'valiant remedies' in public health: strict segregation of the healthy and ill, cleaning streets and latrines, addressing the long-term causes of plague-poverty. Those outside the medical profession joined the chorus.