{"product_id":"foreign-bodies-2","title":"Foreign Bodies","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘This splendid and often moving work of history… Schama has a gift for combining novelistically colourful detail, serious analysis and wryly amusing asides’ \u003ci\u003eDaily Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e ‘Superb’ \u003ci\u003eObserver\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e ‘Extraordinary… A meticulous retelling of a terrible yet scientifically innovative period… Makes an urgent case for building a better future on our toxic past’ \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e ‘This is history of the best sort – humanly engaged but never sentimental’\u003ci\u003e Mail on Sunday \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCities and countries engulfed by panic and death, desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring. This is what the world has just gone through with Covid-19. But as Simon Schama shows in his epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science, it has happened before. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Characteristically, with Schama the message is delivered through\u003cb\u003e gripping, page-turning stories\u003c\/b\u003e set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: smallpox strikes London; cholera hits Paris; plague comes to India. Threading through the scenes of terror, suffering and hope – in hospitals and prisons, palaces and slums – are\u003cb\u003e an unforgettable cast of characters\u003c\/b\u003e: a philosopher-playwright burning up with smallpox in a country chateau; a vaccinating doctor paying house calls in Halifax; a woman doctor in south India driving her inoculator-carriage through the stricken streets as dead monkeys drop from the trees. But we are also in the labs when\u003cb\u003e great, life-saving breakthroughs\u003c\/b\u003e happen, in Paris, Hong Kong and Mumbai.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e At the heart of it all, an unsung hero: Waldemar Haffkine. \u003cb\u003eA gun-toting Jewish student in Odesa turned microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute\u003c\/b\u003e, hailed in England as ‘the saviour of mankind’ for vaccinating millions against cholera and bubonic plague in British India while being cold-shouldered by the medical establishment of the Raj. \u003cb\u003eCreator of the world’s first mass production line of vaccines\u003c\/b\u003e in Mumbai, he is \u003cb\u003etragically brought down in\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e an act of shocking injustice.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eForeign Bodies \u003c\/i\u003ecrosses borders between east and west, Asia and Europe, the worlds of rich and poor, politics and science. Its thrilling story carries with it the credo of its author on\u003cb\u003e the interconnectedness of humanity and nature\u003c\/b\u003e; of the powerful and the people. Ultimately, Schama says, as we face the challenges of our times together, \u003cb\u003e‘there are no foreigners, only familiars’.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MediaPlace","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57317615599998,"sku":"NW9781471169892","price":21.22,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1379\/1261\/files\/9781471169892.jpg?v=1778722394","url":"https:\/\/mediaplace.com\/products\/foreign-bodies-2","provider":"MediaPlace","version":"1.0","type":"link"}