On Immunity ─ An Inoculation

A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year, On Immunity by Eula Biss--now in paperback


In this bold, fascinating book, Eula Biss addresses our fear of the government, the medical establishment, and what may be in our children's air, food, mattresses, medicines, and vaccines. Reflecting on her own experience as a new mother, she suggests that we cannot immunize our children, or ourselves, against the world. As she explores the metaphors surrounding immunity, Biss extends her conversations with other mothers to meditations on the myth of Achilles, Voltaire'sCandide, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Susan Sontag'sAIDS and Its Metaphors, and beyond. On Immunity is an inoculation against our fear and a moving account of how we are all interconnected--our bodies and our fates.

Eula Biss is the author of The Balloonists and Notes from No Man's Land, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism and whichSalon deemed "the most accomplished book of essays anyone has written or published so far in the twenty-first century." Her work has appeared inThe Believer, Harper's Magazine, and The New York Times. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Howard Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in the Chicago area and teaches at Northwestern University.