Viral Volumes

The Great Influenza

The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

By: John M. Barry
Narrated by: Scott Brick
Length: 19 hours 24 minutes

In the winter of 1918, at the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death... Read more

The Ghost Map

By: Steven Johnson
Narrated by: Alan Sklar
Length: 8 hours 37 minutes

A thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London-and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world.



From the dynamic thinker routinely compared to Malcolm Gladwell, E. O. Wilson, and James Gleick, The Ghost Map is a... Read more

How to Survive a Plague

The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS

By: David France
Narrated by: Rory O'Malley
Length: 24 hours 27 minutes

A New York Times 2016 Notable Book

The definitive history of the successful battle to halt the AIDS epidemic—from the creator of, and inspired by, the seminal documentary How to Survive a Plague.

A riveting, powerful telling of the story of the grassroots movement of activists, many of them in a life-or-death struggle, who seized upon scientific... Read more

The Plague Cycle

The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease

By: Charles Kenny
Narrated by: Jacques Roy
Length: 7 hours 5 minutes

A vivid, sweeping, and “fact-filled” (Booklist, starred review) history of mankind’s battles with infectious disease that “contextualizes the COVID-19 pandemic” (Publishers Weekly)—for readers of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Yuval Harari’s Sapiens and John Barry’s The Great Influenza.

For four thousand years, the size and vitality of cities,... Read more

Station Eleven

A Novel (National Book Award Finalist)

By: Emily St. John Mandel
Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
Length: 10 hours 39 minutes

“I never knew an apocalypse could be so peaceful. "Station Eleven" is the perfect tragedy and the perfect comedy, worthy of its traveling Shakespeare performers indeed. Its story is ingenious, its prose haunting, its characters dynamic and their actions remarkably bold. Read more

Hollow Kingdom

By: Kira Jane Buxton
Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
Length: 10 hours 10 minutes

“You wouldn't think a foul-mouthed, wise-cracking crow named S. T. (short for Shit Turd) would be a great companion at the end of the world, but honestly? I couldn't imagine another living being to spend the apocalypse with. Buxton amazingly captures the natural world as the humans have devolved into zombie-like creatures, and given us the... Read more

I Contain Multitudes

The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

By: Ed Yong
Narrated by: Charlie Anson
Length: 9 hours 52 minutes

“Ed Yong writes so enthusiastically about the expansive microbial world and our human understanding of it, past and present, that these science and research packed pages are a joy to read. More remarkable is Yong’s insistence on the moral of the story: it is the balanced mutual self-interest of community, not dog eat dog competition, that is the... Read more

Parasite Rex

Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures

By: Carl Zimmer
Narrated by: Charles Constant
Length: 9 hours 29 minutes

For centuries, parasites have lived in nightmares, horror stories, and the darkest shadows of science. In Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer takes listeners on a fantastic voyage into the secret universe of these extraordinary life-forms—which are not only among the most highly evolved on Earth, but make up the majority of life's diversity. Traveling... Read more

Guns, Germs, and Steel

The Fates of Human Societies

By: Jared Diamond
Narrated by: Doug Ordunio
Length: 16 hours 19 minutes

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history.
 
Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary... Read more