A Deeper Sickness: Journal of America in the Pandemic Year

by Margaret Peacock, Erik L. Peterson

Overview

A harrowing chronicle by two leading historians, capturing in real time the events of a year marked by multiple devastations.

When we look back at the year 2020, how can we describe what really happened? In A Deeper Sickness, award-winning historians Margaret Peacock and Erik Peterson set out to preserve what they call the “focused confusion,” and to probe deeper into what they consider the Four Pandemics that converged around the 12 astonishing months of 2020:

   • Disease
   • Disinformation
   • Poverty
   • Violence

Drs. Peacock and Peterson use their interdisciplinary expertise to extend their analysis beyond the viral science, and instead into the social, political, and historical dimensions of this crisis. They consulted with dozens of experts and witnesses from a wide range of fields—from leading epidemiologists and health care workers to leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, district attorneys, political scientists, philosophers, and more. Their journey revealed a sick country that believed it was well, a violent nation that believed it was peaceful; one that mistook poverty for prosperity and accountability for rebellion.

Organized into the journal-entries along with dozens of archival images, A Deeper Sickness will help readers sift through the chaos and misinformation that characterized those frantic days. It is both an unflinching indictment of a nation that is still reeling and a testament to the power of human resilience and collective memory.

Readers can share their story and become a contributing author by visiting an interactive digital museum, where the authors have preserved dozens of more stories and interviews.

Visit Margaret Peacock and Erik L. Peterson’s digital museum at adhc.lib.ua.edu/pandemicbook/.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807008119
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	03/07/2023
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.61(w) x 8.72(h) x 0.82(d)

About the Author

Dr. Margaret Peacock is a historian of media and propaganda in Russia, the United States, and the Middle East, with graduate degrees in history and information science. She currently teaches at the University of Alabama.

Dr. Erik L. Peterson is a historian of science and medicine, with graduate degrees in history, philosophy, and anthropology. He currently teaches at the University of Alabama.

Editorial Reviews

11/29/2021

University of Alabama historians Peacock, who specializes in media and propaganda, and Peterson, who studies science and medicine, record the tumultuous events of 2020 in this immersive—and frequently blood-boiling—account. In dated entries starting on Jan. 1, 2020, and ending on Jan. 7, 2021, the authors record the first mentions on U.S. disease-tracking websites of an unknown respiratory infection in China, early reassurances from the CDC and media outlets including the New York Times that the flu was a greater danger than Covid-19, the unprecedented spike in unemployment claims after shutdown orders went into effect, the eruption of Black Lives Matter protests following the police killing of George Floyd, and the invasion of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. The authors’ personal reflections are enriched by interviews with public health experts, historians, frontline workers, and even a pair of meth users who shed light on how shutdowns affected the drug market. Though the journal format leaves little room for contextualizing these events, the authors’ diligence and sharp instincts turn up many telling moments, including commerce secretary Wilbur Ross suggesting in January 2020 that “death and disruption in China” would be good for U.S. businesses. The result is a vigorous and clear-eyed first draft of recent history. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

An urgent, timely call for national reckoning.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Presented in a journal format, the book depicts how the pandemic underscored social and economic inequalities at the core of American society.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Both an alarm and a timely call to action . . . [A Deeper Sickness] truly announce[s] the arrival of literature with a central goal of helping us understand the psychology of the pandemic as it relates to relationships and dealing with each other.”
—NPR

From the Publisher

2021-11-30
A real-time document of a year of calamity.

University of Alabama professors Peacock, a historian of propaganda and the media, and Peterson, a historian of medicine and science, each kept copious notes during the daily chaos of 2020, tracking “hundreds of news stories, reports, tweets, posts, blogs, speeches, and videos from across the political spectrum.” Presenting those notes as a day-by-day journal, they have captured vividly “how people encountered these moments and what historical factors informed their understandings of the events unfolding around them.” Beginning on Jan. 1, when they report the alarmed findings of a global disease tracker about a viral outbreak in Wuhan, the authors convey the “messy immediacy” of a year marked by disease, disinformation, and violence. Central to their observations was the increasing threat of Covid-19, complicated by Trump administration policies, dysfunctional government, and “stark, intractable” political partisanship. “It’s a hoax, the Democrats have politicized it, Bill Gates is profiting from it, it’s a Chinese weapon,” social media posts proclaimed on Feb. 29, after the first American died. By March 26, the U.S had become the center of the pandemic even as a debate pitching public health measures against individual freedoms intensified. The pandemic was only one among many other traumas, including the opioid epidemic, lack of affordable housing, the ravages of climate change, and systemic racism. The killing of George Floyd in May and the protests that followed underscored the racial and economic inequality roiling the nation. Summing up their chronicle of chaos, the authors point to three factors that “made America sicker than we should have been in 2020: (a) entrenched racial hierarchies; (b) an economic structure dependent on individual accumulation of wealth and widespread consumption of ephemeral goods and entertainment; (c) distraction, cognitive dissonance, and an intentional historical amnesia that prevented the majority of comfortable, well-intentioned, middle-class, white Americans like ourselves from doing anything about the first two issues.”

An urgent, timely call for national reckoning.

Kirkus Reviews