Start with high-confidence epidemiology books, then narrow by subgenre or adjacent topics.
The Great Influenza
John M. Barry
Tinderbox
Craig Timberg, Daniel Halperin
HIV and AIDS: a Very Short Introduction
Alan Whiteside
Virus Hunt
Dorothy H. Crawford
The Black Death
John Hatcher
Aids
Sigall K. Bell, Kevin J. Selby
The Big One
Michael T. Osterholm PhD MPH, Mark Olshaker
The Hot Zone
Richard Preston
Spillover
David Quammen
The Premonition
Michael Lewis
The Medical Detectives
Berton Roueche
Crisis Averted
Caitlin Rivers PhD, Caitlin Rivers
Crisis in the Red Zone
Outbreak!
Beth Skwarecki
The Slow Plague
Peter R. Gould, Peter Gould
The Ghost Map
Steven Johnson
A Journal of the Plague Year
Daniel Defoe
