This revelatory book charts and explains the impact and consequences of successive pandemics, plagues and epidemics on the course of world history - all through the lens of today's ongoing global experience of COVID 19\. Ranging from prehistory to the present day, it first defines what constitutes a pandemic or epidemic then looks at 20 guilty diseases: including cholera, influenza, bubonic plague, leprosy, measles, smallpox, malaria, AIDS, MERS,...