Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine

Product Description
Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley have been researching quarantine since long before the COVID-19 pandemic. With Until Proven Safe, they bring us a book as compelling as it is definitive, not only urgent reading for social-distanced times but also an up-to-the-minute investigation of the interplay of forces–––biological, political, technological––that shape our modern world.Quarantine is our most powerful response to uncertainty: it means waiting to see if something hidden inside us will be revealed. It is also one of our most dangerous, operating through an assumption of guilt. In quarantine, we are considered infectious until proven safe.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, built to contain the Black Death, to an experimental Ebola unit in London, and from the hallways of the CDC to closed-door simulations where pharmaceutical execs and epidemiologists prepare for the outbreak of a novel coronavirus.But the story of quarantine ranges far beyond the history of medical isolation. In Until Proven Safe, the authors tour a nuclear-waste isolation facility beneath the New Mexican desert, see plants stricken with a disease that threatens the world’s wheat supply, and meet NASA’s Planetary Protection Officer, tasked with saving Earth from extraterrestrial infections. They also introduce us to the corporate tech giants hoping to revolutionize quarantine through surveillance and algorithmic prediction.We live in a disorienting historical moment that can feel both unprecedented and inevitable; Until Proven Safe helps us make sense of our new reality through a thrillingly reported, thought-provoking exploration of the meaning of freedom, governance, and mutual responsibility.
Review
“[Manaugh and Twilley] bring an impressively wide range of interests to bear on a subject that involves not only infectious disease but also―in their ambitious yet seamless narration―politics, agriculture, surveillance and even outer space.”―Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review“What makes [Until Proven Safe] compelling, besides [Manaugh and Twilley’s] extensive experience as journalists, is the depth of their research coupled with a firm conviction that quarantine, a mighty yet dangerous weapon, must be used ‘more wisely in the future’ . . . The informality of the authors’ engaging prose, bearing few scholarly trappings save for the source notes, more aptly resembles that of an article in the New Yorker . . . This is an exceptionally powerful book.”―A. Roger Ekirch, The Wall Street Journal"[Nicola Twilley and Geoff Manaugh] make a compelling case that we must continue to refine the use of quarantine, balancing the needs of public health with those of human rights." ―The New Yorker“Until Proven Safe is uncanny in its prescience . . . Twilley and Manaugh see things that others don’t. Their insatiable curiosity reveals itself through all of their endeavors.”―Allison Arieff, San Francisco Chronicle“There is something counterintuitively comforting in a deeply-considered book that contextualizes and justifies the seclusion and uncertainty of the past 18 months . . . Fascinating.”―Annalisa Quinn, NPR.org"Maybe reading a book about quarantine sounds like the last thing you want to do this summer . . . but indulge me in a counterargument. Manaugh’s and Twilley’s extensive history of a concept we might otherwise take for granted is actually the perfect postpandemic read―an imaginative, layperson-friendly way to make sense of and contextualize what we just lived through." ―Arianna Rebolini, BUZZFEED"As unapologetically delightful as a story about nation-eradicating fatal pathogens can be, Manaugh and Twilley travel from the site of the medieval-era hospitals anchored off the coast of Venice to keep the bubonic plague at bay, to the 2019 dress rehearsals for a then-h