How Contagion Works: Science, Awareness and Community in Times of Global Crises - The short essay that helped change the Covid-19 debate

'Lucid, calm, informed, directly helpful in trying to think about where we are now... The literature of the time after begins here' Evening Standard

'Taking a breather from bewildering statistics and terrible tales of contagion to read Giordano's book was a jolt of brevity and simplicity... It takes concepts that have been dancing away in our minds, just out of reach, and lines them up neatly' The Times

'Potent and original' Sunday Times

'In one short hour, in the midst of this difficult moment, Giordano reinforced my sense of hope in humanity, in the one and the many' Philippe Sands, author of East West Street and The Rat Line

The Covid-19 pandemic is the most significant health emergency of our time.

Writing from Italy in lockdown, physicist and novelist Paolo Giordano explains how disease spreads in our interconnected world:

why it matters
how it impacts us
how we must react

Expanding his focus to include other forms of contagion - from the environmental crisis to fake news and xenophobia - Giordano shows us not just how the coronavirus crisis got so bad so quickly, but also how we can work together to create change.


Paolo Giordano is a physicist and the author of four bestselling novels. His article 'The Mathematics of Contagion' - published in Italy at the beginning of the coronavirus emergency - was shared more than 4 million times and helped shift public opinion in the early stages of the epidemic.