A DEEPER SICKNESS

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

For hundreds of thousands of families, the death of their loved ones will never be forgotten, but for millions more, their memories of that year are giving way to indistinct recollections of general anxiety and anger. A Deeper Sickness is a one-of-a-kind eyewitness account that chronicles the disease, the disinformation, the frayed social fabric, and the violence that converged around the twelve astonishing months of 2020. Award-winning historians Margaret Peacock and Erik Peterson set out with a mission to preserve what they call the "focused confusion" of that fateful year. They consulted with dozens of experts and witnesses from a wide range of fields - from distinguished epidemiologists and healthcare 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 and a violent nation that believed it was peaceful, one that mistook poverty for prosperity and accountability for rebellion. Organized by almost daily entries, and featuring 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 about the pandemic by visiting an interactive digital museum, where the authors have preserved dozens of more stories and interviews. Associate Professor Margaret Peacock is a historian of propaganda and media in the twentieth century. Her work includes Innocent Weapons: The Soviet and American Politics of Childhood in the Cold War. Peacock speaks Russian, Arabic, and French. She has been a Fulbright-Hays scholar, a Kennan Fellow, and a fellow at the National Science Foundation, the Middle East Center at St. Antony College, Oxford, at the American Research Council in Egypt (Cairo), and at the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv. She is an executive leader of the Southern Slavic Conference. She is a regular on the academic and popular lecture circuit. In 2019, she gave invited talks at The Harriman Center at Columbia University, The Clements Center for national Security at The University of Texas-Austin, University College London, St. Andrews College Oxford, and the University of Wisconsin to groups of approximately 100-150 people. Peacock presents at 3-4 international and national conferences each year to rooms of 50 or more. Associate Professor Erik L. Peterson is an award-winning historian of the life and social sciences, a Darwin and Darwinism specialist, an internationally recognized expert in the development of theoretical biology, and co-host of the Speaking of Race, a podcast on the history and science of race and racism. His previous works include The Life Organic: the Theoretical Biology Club and the Roots of Epigenetics. In 2019, he presented his research at academic conferences throughout the US, in the UK, the Netherlands, France, and Germany.