Unprepared
America in the Time of Coronavirus
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- $349.00
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- $349.00
Descripción editorial
"An essential volume." -E. J. Dionne, Jr. * "A damning portrait" -Publishers Weekly
With an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winner Timothy Egan, the riveting, eye-opening first-draft history of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Unprepared is the sweeping history of the Covid-19 pandemic-a raw, primary-source accounting of the epoch-defining event: a virus that first appeared in China in late 2019 and spread rapidly across the globe, killing hundreds of thousands, devastating economies, and changing the modern world forever. A day-by-day chronicle of the response to Covid-19 as it attacked, Unprepared gathers a range of public statements from President Trump and his administration, elected officials such as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, leading journalists and scientists, and organizations from National Nurses United to the United Food and Commercial Workers union. A haunting portrait of the world scrambling for answers while the number of cases rose alongside the death toll, the book reveals not only our strengths as a people, but also the fault lines and dysfunction that plague our nation in the new millennium.
Unprepared is an illuminating artifact for today and for future generations, an astonishing document of history being made, and a multifaceted narrative that drops the reader directly into the real-time experience of confusion, drama, and fear that defines the outbreak of Covid-19.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Freelance writer Sternfeld (coauthor, A Craftsman's Legacy) compiles excerpts from news articles, press conferences, interviews, and medical reports in this eye-opening chronicle of the Covid-19 pandemic from Dec. 31, 2019, through June 5, 2020. The collection begins with a Chinese doctor's WeChat message alerting colleagues to a coronavirus outbreak at a Wuhan seafood market, then shifts focus to America, where the Centers for Disease Control reports the first case in the U.S. on Jan. 21, 2020. Sternfeld paints a damning portrait of President Trump's response to the pandemic simply by placing his public comments ("We have it totally under control") in the context of unfolding events. As Trump complains about political rivals and media coverage, state health officials plead for ventilators and personal protective equipment, and infection and death rates climb exponentially. Other public officials and organizations, including New York governor Andrew Cuomo, virologist Anthony Fauci, labor union National Nurses United, and Ohio health department director Amy Acton, showcase steadier leadership under fire. In the book's emotionally resonant introduction, New York Times columnist Timothy Egan urges readers to hold accountable those responsible for "perhaps the greatest collapse of American society in so short a time, ever." Well-conceived and solidly executed, this is a vital record of an ongoing American crisis.
