The Great Shadow

A highly readable investigation of mankind's struggles to understand what it means to be ill

Anti-science, anti-vaccine, anti-reason beliefs seem to be triumphing over common sense today. How did we get here? Sick brings a huge missing piece to this puzzle-the experience of actually being ill. History chronicles lives and deaths, but there's too often a blank spot in those stories. What did it feel like to be a woman or man struggling with illness in ancient times, in the Middle Ages, in the seventeenth century, or in 1920? And how did that shape our thoughts and convictions?

Sick uses extensive historical research and first-person accounts to tell a vivid story about sickness and our responses to it, from very ancient times until the last decade. In the process of writing, historian Susan Wise Bauer discovered just how many of our current fads and causes are rooted in the moment-by-moment experience of sickness-including wellness trends, the search for a balanced lifestyle, Tupperware containers, plug-in Glade air fresheners, bare hardwood floors, individual Communion cups, antibacterial hand soap, and anti-Semitism.

We can't simply shout facts at people who refuse vaccinations, believe that immigrants carry diseases, or insist that God will look out for them during a pandemic. We have to enter with imagination, historical perspective, and empathy into their world. Sick does just that with page-turning flair and entertaining detail.