The ‘Spanish’ influenza of 1918 was the deadliest pandemic in history, killing as many as 50 million people worldwide. Canadian federal public health officials tried to prevent the disease from entering the country by implementing a maritime quarantine, as had been their standard practice since the cholera epidemics of 1832. But the 1918 flu was a different type of disease. In spite of the best efforts of both federal and local officials, up to fifty thousand Canadians died.

Like sharks, epidemic diseases always lurk just beneath the surface. This fast-paced history of their effect on mankind prompts questions about the limits of scientific knowledge, the dangers of medical hubris, and how we should prepare as epidemics become ever more frequent.

A gripping, ultimately triumphant memoir that's also the most comprehensive and comprehensible study of the neuroscience of addiction written for the general public.

A fundamental and groundbreaking reassessment of how we view and manage cancer