Kari Nixon - Quarantine Life from Cholera to COVID-19: What Pandemics Teach Us About Parenting, Work, Life, and Communities from the 1700s to Today

What Pandemics Teach Us About Parenting, Work, Life, and Communities from the 1700s to Today

Quarantine Life from Cholera to COVID-19

Kari Nixon, PhD

Lest we forget the lessons of our past, Kari Nixon reminds usin poignant yet relevant detailthat weve been here before, and, more important, we can find our way out.

Niki Kapsambelis, author of The Inheritance: A Family on the Front Lines of the Battle Against Alzheimers Disease

A brilliant look at the history of humanity through the lens of disease, this book is a must-read for anyone who has found depths of resilience and determination in this pandemic (and thats all of us). Smart, accessible, and downright funny, Nixons Quarantine Life presents an in-depth archive of our collective past in order to better illuminate who we will be beyond just survivors of a pandemic. Her words make us reflect our own self-prioritization and adaptability, and, most important, have us believing we will come out of this better than when we entered.

Aparna Shewakramani, TV personality

Ive interviewed over three hundred scientists for my show and read nothing but science books. Never have I met someone whose incredibly distinctive work became so serendipitously relevant and important at such a specific moment in time. Kari packed a wonderful overview of three hundred years worth of literary accounts from humans impacted by various pathogens through modern history and mixed it perfectly with modern science to give us much-needed historical perspective on the present while providing balanced views on COVID and other current diseases and, perhaps even more important, a clearer outlook on the inevitable future. Whether youre into history, literature, or science, or just want to better understand the many frustrating and seemingly counterintuitive responses contemporary humans are having while experiencing their first pandemic this is a book centuries in the making that is a must-read today.

Shane Mauss, host of the podcast Here We Are

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Copyright 2021 by Kari Nixon

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First Tiller Press hardcover edition June 2021

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Interior design by Laura Levatino

Jacket design by Patrick Sullivan

Author photo by Anne Oliver

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-9821-7246-6

ISBN 978-1-9821-7247-3 (ebook)

For Flora and Zelda

Taller than the trees, bigger than the sky, and deeper than the ocean

And because of Mom, Dad, and Gracie

Because you loved me, I could love. Because you fought for me, I found I could fight for others.

No one has worked harder on this book (besides me) than my husband. In Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, the indomitable little Pip says to his love interest, Estella, You have been in every line I ever read. Its cloyingly romantic. But perhaps the fact that you, Daniel, have read every line I ever wrote, is even more romantic. This fact bespeaks labor, empathy, and a synergy of goals that is the love of real life, not of novels. This version of romance is an untiring, service-minded love that toils alongside, sometimes unglamorously. This love has seen you microwaving pizza while I wrote, or playing with the girls while I wrote, or buying groceries while I, you guessed it, wrote. It has seen you editing my grammar when my eyes were too strained from a day of researching. It has also fueled some of our amazing adventures, as you traveled with me while I studied old scientific documents and instruments in England, where you never once lamented the time spent so doing and, in fact, were joyfully eager to be such an integral part of my mind and thought. Perhaps most dear to my heart, this style of love has fueled our conversations for over a decade, as we chat about my projects and their trajectory over an evening cocktail, by a warm fire, surrounded by the much-too-many animals weve adopted. You listen, you think, and we dream of projects that I carry out but that we, together, envisioned and helped grow. Our talk never grows stale, because we travel the life of the mind hand in metaphorical hand, and there is always some unexplored nook or cranny that you brave with me. One day well grow old, but beside you, Ill always feel the childlike joy of discovery and investigation with a trusted, much braver friend.

Such is only possible because you have read every line Ive ever written. Every. Single. One. You know what I know, and can theorize with me, remind me of evidence Ive forgotten, and help me track down sources whose authors you remember sometimes better than I do. Your love is sometimes quiet, but it is always vast. It has shown me the depth of human goodness like a beacon.

Kven spr etter leidi nr ein har slik vind!

Just as I have so many friends and family whove shaped who I am and how I think about life, so too have a variety of scholars, some of whom Im lucky enough to call my friends. In some cases, I will specifically name a scholar who has most heavily influenced my own learning on a given subject so that readers can dive more deeply into some of these historical figures and discoveries, should they choose. I refuse to pretend my thinking was created in a vacuum, for as Ive already suggestedand as I will continue to insistwe are all connected. Beyond this, my desire for encouraging shared connection between seemingly separate communities extends to the Ivory Tower; there are some great scholars out there, doing great work, and this work shouldnt just be read by other academics. Whenever possible, Ill recommend some extra reading to you by scholars whom I find both incredibly bright and also accessiblescholars who want their work to influence the public, and whose work might just make the world a better place. But Im only human, and it would be impossible for me to name every scholar who has influenced my thinking; there are scores of them, and I owe a debt of gratitude to each. Thank you also to my dissertation committee, whom I thank at great length in my academic book, but here I will simply say that I will always refer to you as the parents of my mindthe people who helped me gain a unique academic understanding about public society and the world that you personally know I so desperately needed in order to understand my private life. So thank you to Ross Murfin, Rajani Sudan, and Beth Newman.