Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Journalists Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley explore the history and future of quarantine, from the Black Death to Big Data"--

Quarantine is our most powerful response to uncertainty: it means waiting to see if something hidden inside us will be revealed. It is also one of our most dangerous, operating through an assumption of guilt. In quarantine, we are considered infectious until proven safe. Manaugh and Twilly track the history and future of quarantine around the globe. It is a story of emergency isolation, but they also guide us through a nuclear-waste isolation facility beneath the New Mexican desert; plants stricken with a disease that threatens the world's wheat supply; and a meeting with NASA's Planetary Protection Officer, tasked with saving Earth from extraterrestrial infections. -- adapted from jacket