How Contagion Works: Science, Awareness and Community in Times of Global Crises

'Lucid, calm, informed, directly helpful in trying to think about where we are now... The literature of the time after begins here' - Evening Standard * 'Taking a breather from bewildering statistics and terrible tales of contagion to read Giordano's book was a jolt of brevity and simplicity... It takes concepts that have been dancing away in our minds, just out of reach, and lines them up neatly' - The Times * 'Potent and original' - Sunday Times * 'In one short hour, in the midst of this difficult moment, Giordano reinforced my sense of hope in humanity, in the one and the many' - Philippe Sands, author of East West Street and The Rat Line

The Covid-19 pandemic is the most significant health emergency of our time. Writing from Italy in lockdown, physicist and novelist Paolo Giordano explains how disease spreads in our interconnected world: why it matters; how it impacts us; how we must react. Expanding his focus to include other forms of contagion - from the environmental crisis to fake news and xenophobia - Giordano shows us not just how the coronavirus crisis got so bad so quickly, but also how we can work together to create change.

Paolo Giordano is a physicist and the author of four bestselling novels. His article 'The Mathematics of Contagion' - published in Italy at the beginning of the coronavirus emergency - was shared more than 4 million times and helped shift public opinion in the early stages of the epidemic.