The appearance of coronavirus in the United States in the spring of 2020 triggered massive changes in many areas of society and created a swiftly evolving group of publications (in both print and online formats) from sources as diverse as government agencies, public figures, academia, and the popular press. Most of the books in this pool explore the United States’s response to the disease and the factors contributing to it, and reflect the dynamic change and debate that characterized a vulnerable nation experiencing a new disease. Jon Sternfeld’s distinctive compilation Unprepared: America in the Time of Coronavirus is a good place to begin tracking the history of COVID-19. Sternfeld is a journalist, and in this book he provides an oral history supported by selected documentation. The quotes Sternfeld includes reflect the range of information (and misinformation) that emanated from public statements from individuals and organizations worldwide, starting with the initial outbreak in China in December 2019 and continuing to June 5, 2020. In his treatment of the first year of the COVID pandemic, Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live, Yale sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis builds a fascinating picture of American society under COVID. Written between March and August of 2020, when Christakis was in isolation in his home in Vermont, Apollo’s Arrow draws on the characterization of disease in Greek mythology as spread by the bow and arrow wielded by Apollo, the god who had the power to both cause and heal sickness. Beginning with the first cases of COVID in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, Christakis details and evaluates the intertwined factors of epidemiology, politics, biology, economics, clinical practices and standards, and social structures.
The second year of the COVID pandemic saw the publication of The Plague Year: America in the Time of COVID by New Yorker staff writer, screenwriter, and playwright Lawrence Wright. Though similar in content to the Sternfeld and Christakis volumes, The Plague Year draws on numerous personal narratives to provide an account of the evolution of awareness of COVID within the United States, and among the world health agencies, by focusing on the ways individuals at all levels of society responded to the threat.
