What: Lydia Kang, MD, co-author of Quackery, will join us via Zoom to discuss its new companion title, Patient Zero
When: Tuesday, November 9th at 6 p.m.
Where: Virtual, via Zoom.
About: Lydia Kang will discuss and take questions from the audience in recognition of her new book, Patient Zero, co-authored with Nate Pedersen. Copies of Patient Zero or Quackery ordered from The Bookworm will be signed and/or personalized by Lydia Kang.
Patient Zero tells the long and fascinating history of disease outbreaks—how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us. Written in the authors' lively and accessible style, chapters include page-turning medical stories about a particular disease or virus that combine "Patient Zero" narratives, or the human stories behind outbreaks, with historical examinations of missteps, milestones, scientific theories, and more. Interspersed are origin stories of a different sort--how a rye fungus in 1951 turned a small village in France into a phantasmagoric scene reminiscent of Burning Man. Plus the uneasy history of human autopsy, how the HIV virus has been with us for at least a century, and more.
Lydia Kang, MD, is a practicing internal medicine physician and author of young adult fiction and adult fiction, including the recently released Opium and Absinthe. Her nonfiction has been published in JAMA, the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Journal of General Internal Medicine.