Love the history-of-epidemics graphic published today on nytimes.com along with the short piece, "American Epidemics, A Brief History."

What the graphic does so beautifully is emphasize how often immigrant groups are scapegoats for being the agent of epidemics: Russian Jews in the 1892 cholera outbreak in New York, Chinese in the 1900 bubonic plague outbreak in San Francisco and ... Mexicans in the 2009 swine flu pandemic.

I had no idea that we actually forced Mexicans to take kerosene baths in 1917 to combat an outbreak of typhus fever!

Do you have a favorite book on the history of epidemics? Please share your recommendations with us!

Two of my favorites are Plagues and Peoples (William McNeill) and Guns, Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond).