On Immunity: An Inoculation

If you're tired of reading about vaccination only in bitter Facebook comment threads, you might be refreshed by On Immunity. Biss is the daughter of a doctor and a poet, and her little book is an extended essay on both the science and the metaphors of vaccination, and an argument that they are not separate. It is also, crucially, an argument for the continued importance of vaccines, but she doesn't only cite epidemiological statistics. She turns our metaphors of purity and immunity inside out, showing how dependent we are—and always have been—on each other, as part of a public body beyond the boundaries of our own.