Previous articleNext article FreeSecond Look: PandemicsEditors’ IntroductionAlexandra Hui and Matthew LavineAlexandra Hui Search for more articles by this author and Matthew Lavine Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreBecause of the vagaries of the publication process, material for Isis is finalized six months ahead of print. As we write this introduction in July 2020, we experience even more keenly the sense of psychological time dilation commonly remarked on in conversations about the COVID-19 pandemic. Six months ago, real awareness of the novel coronavirus was just starting to seep into the world outside of China. Now, in our present, some nations have significantly reduced their infection and death rates, in some cases to zero. In others, including the nation in which we write this, the spread of the virus is all but unchecked. Much of the world exists in a sort of epistemic flux, with uncertainty about the reliability or completeness of data causing grief of its own. Under the circumstances, a common conceit of our work as historians—that we may use the past to illuminate the present—feels especially fraught right now.The idea for this Second Look section grew out of a conversation with colleagues as COVID-19 crossed the threshold into pandemic status. As communities scrambled to contain the spread, there was a simultaneous abundance and dearth of information available. Much was known about past pandemics, but the sheer novelty of this “novel coronavirus” was menacing. Historians of disease and public health began receiving calls from reporters, friends, and family members asking about their own research and their opinions on other scholars’ work. Implicit in those requests was the assumption that pandemics, as Warwick Anderson says, “display a nasty family resemblance.” This is almost always matched by a similarly unspoken hope that such a resemblance will mean that this disease, too, will quickly be consigned to the history books, entirely out of sight and mind—that, in other words, humanity will be “cured” of the burden of awareness of it, if not entirely cured of the virus itself. But that kind of cure never really comes; any sufficiently disruptive or deadly outbreak leaves its mark on the society that suffers it.COVID-19 presses to the forefront of one’s consciousness, infiltrating small tasks and big decisions alike. We wanted to know how it is changing how historians think about their day-to-day work. Rather than ask our contributors to reflect on a single work, as we often do for Second Look sections, we instead asked them to write about the books that they are rereading and reconsidering in light of the pandemic. It is a truism that the present informs how historians write about the past, and so we offer this collection of short essays in the hope of capturing some of that influence and holding it up to the light of analysis.We placed no restrictions on how our contributors approached this task and made no recommendations, save that they write about books that were at least ten years old. Some of their selections were expected: no one will be surprised that books like The Cholera Years and The Gospel of Germs were top of mind for several contributors. Other choices, like Ruth Rogaski’s history of Chinese hygienic reforms or Achille Mbembe’s exploration of the relationship between race and the power of the state to dictate who survives a crisis like a disease outbreak, made particular sense in the present context. Still other contributors surprised us, and may surprise our readers, with the works they found relevant in the midst of a pandemic.We offer our sincere thanks to our contributors, and their two anonymous referees, many of whom were juggling academic commitments, childcare, their own close encounters with the disease, and a very real toll of grief and rage and despair. Also, in order to document how the pandemic is affecting scholarship, we would like to acknowledge that several individuals were unable to contribute to this Second Look owing to overwhelming work and life commitments.If we may be indulged in one moment of personal privilege: in our present circumstances, publishing a scholarly journal feels like sending messages in bottles out to sea or beaming signals into space. Even as the History of Science Society rushes to virtualize our annual meeting (we trust it went well), we know we’ll miss the informal and indelibly personal encounters with colleagues that form the foundation of a robust scholarly community. Know that as we wrote this we wished our readers and colleagues well, in the hopes that we will meet again, off these pages, soon. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 111, Number 4December 2020 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/712336 Views: 732 © 2020 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.