The Plague Year

April 15, 2021
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist turns to an enterprise fraught with political implication: the rise and spread of Covid-19. In 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services conducted an exercise premised on the scenario that "an international group of tourists visiting China" were "infected with a novel influenza, and then spread it across the world." As Wright delineates, the results were not inspiring. The Trump administration admitted that the response was chaotic, with no clear chain of command and inadequate response. In the end, the influenza was projected to kill 586,000 Americans--not far from the mark of those who died in the U.S. in the pandemic's first year. That report was buried. In China, where the virus first emerged, the government forbade doctors to wear protective gear, jailed those who tried to alert the public, and underestimated the number of dead in the first wave by tenfold. When Trump came into office, Wright notes, his administration "was handed the keys to the greatest medical-research establishment in the history of science." Of course, it wasted the resource, politicized federal science, and tried to wish the plague away. In his characteristically rigorous and engrossing style, Wright documents innumerable episodes of ineptitude and malfeasance even as Trump officials such as Peter Navarro privately reckoned that "a full-blown...pandemic could infect as many as 100 million Americans." The author also argues that Trump, infected with the virus at a rally in which he refused to wear a mask, was much sicker than was revealed and was terrified at the prospect of dying. Still, he consistently failed to develop a national response, so the "pandemic was broken into fifty separate epidemics." Particularly compelling is Wright's straight-line connection of the Jan. 6 Capitol invasion and Trump's failed attempt to maintain power to the destabilizing effects of the plague. Maddening and sobering--as comprehensive an account of the first year of the pandemic as we've yet seen.

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May 3, 2021
Pestilence, tumult, and the horror of Trumpism roil this scattershot survey of 2020. Pulitzer-winning New Yorker journalist Wright (The End of October) reviews the course of the Covid-19 pandemic and accompanying upheavals, from the first wave through the summer of protest and the frenzied aftermath of the 2020 election. He emphasizes the CDC’s delays in rolling out virus tests, skimpy and chaotic procurement of personal protective equipment, and persistent efforts by President Trump to downplay the pandemic’s seriousness. Wright paints an especially revealing portrait of White House policymaking based on insider accounts by staffers including deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, who lobbied the Trump administration to take the virus more seriously. Unfortunately, the treatment of major controversies tends to be one-sided and overwrought. Wright likens the Capitol rioters to “Visigoths breaking through the gates of Rome,” treats opposition to lockdowns and mask mandates as the preserve of wild-eyed conspiracy theorists, and generally bemoans the “cyclonic forces of fascism and nihilism” besieging America. The result is an immersive and richly detailed yet contentious take on recent history that provokes more than enlightens.

May 15, 2021
In 2020, America was waging war against a lethal virus and against itself, battling both nature and human nature. In his exemplary chronicle of the cataclysmic effects of COVID-19 on society, Pulitzer Prize-winner Wright (The Terror Years, 2016; God Save Texas, 2018) analyzes missteps and misinformation, failed leadership, lack of transparency, and repeated rejections of science. ""Ordinary"" was basically expunged from our lives. Wright reflects on how ""the air itself might carry our destruction."" Grief and guilt, anger and blame, fear and death permeate these pages. But there are also countless examples of hope, sacrifice, and heroic feats. Wright's interviews with experts in virology, economics, public health, history, politics, and medicine are enlightening. He acknowledges, ""There has never been such an enormous, worldwide scientific effort so intensely focused on a single disease."" He expounds on the initial situation in Wuhan, political calculations, spike proteins, anti-maskers, lockdowns, flattening the curve, Operation Warp Speed, and much more. COVID-19 was not the only plague afflicting Americans in 2020; racial injustice, economic recession, and hyper-partisanship all exacted additional tolls. By far the best book yet on COVID-19, Wright's chronicle offers a brutal lesson on the devastation that results when a pandemic is met with a lack of planning, mixed messages, and inept leadership.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Wright is at his finest here in frontline research, expert analysis, and lucid writing, and readers will be eager for his perspective on this urgent situation.

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Starred review from June 1, 2021

In this latest work, best-selling author Wright (The Looming Tower) looks back on a nearly unprecedented period of U.S. history: the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting from the discovery of the virus in China in early 2020, and leading up to the final days of the Trump administration in 2021, Wright surveys one momentous year. Delving into economic, social, biological, racial, and political aspects of the pandemic, this is an overarching behind-the-scenes look at the pandemic's effects on individual lives. Wright cuts through misinformation to present nearly every aspect of the year 2020, including the biological breakthroughs of vaccines, personal tragedies, and collective trauma. All is thoroughly discussed with empathy and compassion. Also included are interviews with staff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and personal reports from families across the country (from New York to Tulsa to New Orleans) whose lives were impacted by the pandemic. VERDICT While there are already several other books about COVID-19 and its sociological impact on the United States, this wide-ranging yet deeply personal account is a great starting point. At times infuriating, unbelievable, heartbreaking, and even witty, Wright's narrative is sorely needed.--Laura Hiatt, Fort Collins, CO

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