Apollo’s Arrow

The way the coronavirus pandemic changed life in the United States while it was under way, and the recovery that may follow in later years, are the subject physician and sociologist Nicholas A. Christakis takes up. He draws on case studies and research from genetics, epidemiology, history, data science, sociology and medicine. One theme is the strangeness of living through a plague, an experience unusual for nearly everyone now alive yet basic to the human species as a whole. The pandemic, he argues, opened new divisions and new chances for cooperation, straining a frayed culture without defeating it. Throughout, he sets the force of a deadly germ against the evolved social nature of human beings.

Paul Graham called it an unusual mix of broad historical panorama and very topical bestseller, with interesting insights on every page.