12 Days: Jean-Bédel Bokassa and the memory of pandemics

In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney recounts the story of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which infected a third of the world's population and caused between 50 and 100 million deaths. The book explores how the virus traveled globally, exposing human vulnerability and driving innovation in medicine, religion, and the arts. It also examines the pandemic's significant social and political impacts, including its role in pushing India to independence, South Africa to apartheid, and Switzerland to the brink of civil war. Spinney draws on research in history, virology, epidemiology, psychology, and economics to masterfully recount this little-known catastrophe that forever changed humanity.

The Waste Land is a 434-line poem divided into five sections: 'The Burial of the Dead', 'A Game of Chess', 'The Fire Sermon', 'Death by Water', and 'What the Thunder Said'. It is a complex and erudite work that incorporates numerous allusions to mythology, classical literature, and religious texts. The poem reflects the spiritual disillusionment and moral decay of the Western world after World War I, portraying a sterile and fragmented society. It was initially met with controversy due to its innovative and often obscure style but has since become a central work in the modernist canon.