Thomas W. Laqueur Resource Recommendations

Miranda Schonbrun

Accompanying the online reflection “From Providentialism to Epidemiology: Understanding Pandemics through History” Thomas W. Laqueur provided resource recommendations on the topics of democracy, religion, medicine, government, and death from a historical perspective.

  • Plagues and People, William McNeill
  • Blindness as well as Death with Interruptions, Jose Saramago
  • Death is a Social Disease, William Coleman

“This book is about early 19th century France, but remains one of the best introductions to how we understand disease politically” — Thomas W. Laqueur

  • The Cholera Years: the United States in 1832, Charles Rosenberg
  • The Great Influenza, John M Barry

As part of the Berkeley Democracy and Public Theology Program, BCSR’s Public Forum on Religion and Pandemic brings together scholars and the public to address the current pandemic and its commensurate crises, exploring the intersection between religion and timely topics such as the environment, public health, elections and democracy, religious freedom, and nationalism in order to foster dialogue and reflection.

The Berkeley Public Forum on Religion and Pandemic is generously sponsored by the Henry Luce Foundation