This is the story of a group who anticipated, traced and hunted the coronavirus; who understood the need to learn from history, to question everything, and to do all of this fast, in order to save lives, communities, society itself. It’s about the failures and triumphs of human judgement and imagination. Lewis’s previous books have lifted the lid on some of the biggest stories of our times: they include Flash Boys, an exposé of high-speed scamming, Liar’s Poker, which defined the excesses of the 1980s, and The Fifth Risk, revealing what happens when democracy unravels.