Created by three historians of public health, this reading list provides a range of voices and perspectives that give context not just to COVID-19 but also to the medical, scientific, cultural, political, and economic structures that shape this and other pandemics. They are structures that, beyond biology alone, are often what make pandemics selectively—and unequally—deadly.

David Barnes, Merlin Chowkwanyun, and Kavita Sivaramakrishnan, “Pandemic Syllabus,” Public Books, July 13, 2020.