The number of books and articles on the diseases discussed in Giblin's book grows steadily. Boccaccio's description of the Black Death in "Day One" of his Decameron (c.

1348) is worth reading. Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year (1722) is also worth reading, although in Defoe's case, what appears to be a firsthand account is actually based on contemporary records of events he would have been too young to remember. Albert Camus' The Plague (1947) is a piece of fiction with an epidemic of bubonic plague as its background.

Giblin is still correct when he says that Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On is the most complete history of AIDS. The conquest of smallpox is covered in June Goodfield's Quest for the Killers, a companion to a television series.

In The Seventh Seal (1956), Ingmar Bergman recreates the atmosphere of the years when the Black Death...