Books by Jr. Cohn

In this study, Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. investigates thousands of descriptions of epidemics reaching back before the fifth-century-BCE Plague of Athens to the 2014 Ebola outbreak to challenge the dominant hypothesis that epidemics invariably provoke hatred, blaming of the 'other', and victimizing bearers of epidemic diseases.

A fascinating and groundbreaking study, challenging the view that the Black Death was the same as the modern rat-based bubonic plague.

Cultures of Plague highlights this most feared epidemic, one that threatened Italy top to toe from 1575 to 1578 and unleashed an avalanche of plague writing. In the heartland of Counter-Reformation Italy, physicians along with those outside the profession questioned the foundations of Galenic and Renaissance medicine, even the role of God.