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'Manaugh and Twilley shed illuminating light on a phenomenon that seems utterly of the present moment.' Financial Times' Best Books of the Year
'Startlingly timely, authoritatively researched, and electrifyingly written.' Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
Quarantine has shaped our world, yet it remains both feared and misunderstood. It is our most powerful response to uncertainty, but it operates through an assumption of guilt: in quarantine, we are considered infectious until proven safe. An unusually poetic metaphor for moral and mythic ills, quarantine means waiting to see if something hidden inside of us will be revealed.
Until Proven Safe tracks the history and future of quarantine around the globe, chasing the story of emergency isolation through time and space - from the crumbling lazarettos of the Mediterranean to the hallways of the CDC, to the corporate giants hoping to disrupt the widespread quarantine imposed by Covid-19 before the next pandemic hits through surveillance and algorithmic prediction.
Yet quarantine is more than just a medical tool: Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley drop deep into the Earth to tour a nuclear-waste isolation facility beneath the New Mexican desert, strip down to nothing but protective Tyvek suits to see plants stricken with a disease that threatens the world's wheat supply, and meet NASA's Planetary Protection Officer tasked with saving the Earth from extraterrestrial infections.
The result is part travelogue, part intellectual history - a book as compelling as it is definitive, and one that could not be more urgent or timely.
About the author
Geoff Manaugh is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the author of A Burglar’s Guide to the City, which was a New York Times bestseller and one of Amazon.com’s ‘Best Books of 2016.’
Manaugh regularly covers issues related to cities, design, crime, infrastructure, and technology for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, New Scientist, The Daily Beast, Wired UK, and many other publications. He has also contributed essays to multiple books, exhibition catalogues and artist monographs.
Nicola Twilley is a British-born, US-based writer and journalist. She is a co-host of the podcast Gastropod and a contributor to The New Yorker. She also runs the blog Edible Geography. She lives in New York.
Summary
'Manaugh and Twilley shed illuminating light on a phenomenon that seems utterly of the present moment.' Financial Times’ Best Books of the Year
'Startlingly timely, authoritatively researched, and electrifyingly written.' Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
Quarantine has shaped our world, yet it remains both feared and misunderstood. It is our most powerful response to uncertainty, but it operates through an assumption of guilt: in quarantine, we are considered infectious until proven safe. An unusually poetic metaphor for moral and mythic ills, quarantine means waiting to see if something hidden inside of us will be revealed.
Until Proven Safe tracks the history and future of quarantine around the globe, chasing the story of emergency isolation through time and space – from the crumbling lazarettos of the Mediterranean to the hallways of the CDC, to the corporate giants hoping to disrupt the widespread quarantine imposed by Covid-19 before the next pandemic hits through surveillance and algorithmic prediction.
Yet quarantine is more than just a medical tool: Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley drop deep into the Earth to tour a nuclear-waste isolation facility beneath the New Mexican desert, strip down to nothing but protective Tyvek suits to see plants stricken with a disease that threatens the world’s wheat supply, and meet NASA’s Planetary Protection Officer tasked with saving the Earth from extraterrestrial infections.
The result is part travelogue, part intellectual history – a book as compelling as it is definitive, and one that could not be more urgent or timely.
Additional text
Strap on your plague beaks and round up the loose women! In this intrepid, occasionally creepy jaunt through seven centuries of disease control, Twilley and Manaugh prove that the past is never dead; it’s just in quarantine.
Report
Reads like a global safari of humanity's best-laid plans being never quite enough . . . [Manaugh and Twilley] are well-placed to tell the tale, weaving the spatial, social and scientific facets of medical isolation into an entertaining adventure. Oliver Wainwright Guardian
