Arno Karlen (May 7, 1937 – May 13, 2010, http://antiochcollege.org/news/obituaries/2453.html) was an American poet, psychoanalyst, and in particular, popular science writer. He won the 1996 Rhone-Poulenc Prize for science books with Plague’s Progress which deals with the relationship between Man and disease.
Terrible diseases have wreaked havoc on human life since the dawn of history. The Black Death, the Great Plague, leprosy, smallpox: the very names now have a historical – almost a mythological – ring. With our space-age hospitals and wonder drugs, surely we’ve consigned pestilence to the past? Even AIDS hasn’t succeeded in persuading us otherwise . . . Yet in this shocking, scintillating book, biohistorian Arno Karlen questions this complacency, tracing the continuities of disease from ancient times to the present day. Epidemics, he argues are anything but over: indeed humanity may well be standing on the brink of disaster.
272 pages in Phoenix paperback edition
ISBN 978-0753814437
Arno Karlen