This is a bibliography of the history of the COVID-19 pandemic. This bibliography is limited to history and excludes other disciplines unless the work in question contains substantial historical material or value.
The global COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It spread to other parts of Asia and then worldwide in early 2020. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020 and assessed it as having become a pandemic on 11 March. The WHO declared that the public health emergency caused by COVID-19 had ended in May 2023, while noting that COVID-19 continued to be a global health threat.
Bibliography contains academic level English language books (including translations) and journal articles, published mainly post World War II. Book entries may have references to reviews published in academic journals or major newspapers when these could be considered helpful. These reference reviews also function as a resource to find other works on this subject. Works listed here are cited in the notes or bibliographies of scholarly sources. Each is published by an academic or major press, written by a recognized expert, or substantially reviewed in scholarly journals; borderline cases are omitted. A selection of primary sources is included. Many of the books below carry their own bibliographies; see the Further reading section for other bibliographies, and the External links section for historical sites, academic sites, and museums.
Citations follow APA style. Books have citations to academic journal or mainstream published reviews when available. For books only partly about the subject, relevant chapter or section titles are provided when useful and available. Translators of the original-language edition are included when possible. In cases where a title or name has appeared with more than one English spelling, the most recent published form is used and a footnote documents any earlier title under which the work appeared.
Global surveys
Baldwin, P. (2021). Fighting the first wave: Why the coronavirus was tackled so differently across the globe. Cambridge University Press. Bethke, F. S., & Wolff, J. (2023). Lockdown of expression: Civic space restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic as a response to mass protests. Democratization, 30(6), 1073–1091. Claessens, M. (2021). The science and politics of Covid-19: How scientists should tackle global crises. Springer. Comstock, A. L., Heiss, A., & Chaudhry, S. (2025). Derogations, democratic backsliding, and international human rights during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Human Rights, 24(1), 95–110. Drezner, D. W. (2020). The song remains the same: International relations after COVID-19. International Organization, 74(S1), E18–E35. Edgell, A. B., Lachapelle, J., Lührmann, A., & Maerz, S. F. (2021). Pandemic backsliding: Violations of democratic standards during Covid-19. Social Science & Medicine, 285, 114244. Engler, S., Brunner, P., Loviat, R., Abou-Chadi, T., Leemann, L., Glaser, A., & Kübler, D. (2021). Democracy in times of the pandemic: Explaining the variation of COVID-19 policies across European democracies. West European Politics, 44(5–6), 1077–1102. Gidengil, E., Stolle, D., & Bergeron-Boutin, O. (2022). COVID-19 and support for executive aggrandizement. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 55(2), 342–372. Ginsburg, T., & Versteeg, M. (2021). The bound executive: Emergency powers during the pandemic. International Journal of Constitutional Law, 19(5), 1498–1535. Giommoni, T., & Loumeau, G. (2022). Lockdown and voting behaviour: A natural experiment on postponed elections during the COVID-19 pandemic. Economic Policy, 37(111), 547–599. Greer, S. L., King, E. J., Massard da Fonseca, E., & Peralta-Santos, A. (Eds.). (2021). Coronavirus politics: The comparative politics and policy of COVID-19. University of Michigan Press. Hale, T., Angrist, N., Goldszmidt, R., Kira, B., Petherick, A., Phillips, T., Webster, S., Cameron-Blake, E., Hallas, L., Majumdar, S., & Tatlow, H. (2021). A global panel database of pandemic policies (Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker). Nature Human Behaviour, 5(4), 529–538. Horton, R. (2020). The COVID-19 catastrophe: What's gone wrong and how to stop it happening again. Polity. Johansson, B., Hopmann, D. N., & Shehata, A. (2021). When the rally-around-the-flag effect disappears, or: When the COVID-19 pandemic becomes "normalized". Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 31(sup1), 321–334. Kavanagh, M. M., & Singh, R. (2020). Democracy, capacity, and coercion in pandemic response: COVID-19 in comparative political perspective. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 45(6), 997–1012. Landman, T., & Smallman-Raynor, M. (2023). The politics of COVID-19: Government response in comparative perspective. Political Geography, 106, 102957. Lasco, G. (2020). Medical populism and the COVID-19 pandemic. Global Public Health, 15(10), 1417–1429. Lipscy, P. Y. (2020). COVID-19 and the politics of crisis. International Organization, 74(S1), E98–E127. Morgan, P. (2022). China's COVID-19 vaccine supplies to the Global South: Between politics and business. Bristol University Press. Petrov, J. (2020). The COVID-19 emergency in the age of executive aggrandizement: What role for legislative and judicial checks? The Theory and Practice of Legislation, 8(1–2), 71–92. Schraff, D. (2021). Political trust during the Covid-19 pandemic: Rally around the flag or lockdown effects? European Journal of Political Research, 60(4), 1007–1017. Tooze, A. (2021). Shutdown: How Covid shook the world's economy. Viking.
The World Health Organization and the pandemic
Aremu, S. O., Adamu, A. I., Obeta, O. K., Ibe, D. O., Mairiga, S. A., Otukoya, M. A., & Barkhadle, A. A. (2025). The United States withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), its implications for global health governance. Globalization and Health, 21(1), 48. Benvenisti, E. (2020). The WHO—destined to fail?: Political cooperation and the COVID-19 pandemic. American Journal of International Law, 114(4), 588–597. Davies, S. E., & Wenham, C. (2020). Why the COVID-19 response needs International Relations. International Affairs, 96(5), 1227–1251. Davies, S. E., & Harman, S. (2026). WHO and COVID-19: Stress testing the boundary of science and politics. International Relations, 40(1), 53–73. de Bengy Puyvallée, A., & Storeng, K. T. (2022). COVAX, vaccine donations and the politics of global vaccine inequity. Globalization and Health, 18(1), 26. Stein, F. (2021). Risky business: COVAX and the financialization of global vaccine equity. Globalization and Health, 17(1), 112. Villarreal, P. A. (2021). The law of the WHO and COVID-19 pandemic reformism. German Yearbook of International Law, 64(1), 11–40. Wilson, K., Halabi, S., & Gostin, L. O. (2020). The International Health Regulations (2005), the threat of populism and the COVID-19 pandemic. Globalization and Health, 16(1), 70. Yamey, G., & Titanji, B. K. (2025). Withdrawal of the United States from the WHO — how President Trump is weakening public health. New England Journal of Medicine, 392(15), 1457–1460. Yang, H. (2022). Politicizing global governance institutions in times of crisis: The case of World Health Organization during the coronavirus pandemic. Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, 28(3), 405–431.
Regional
United States
Abutaleb, Y., & Paletta, D. (2021). Nightmare scenario: Inside the Trump administration's response to the pandemic that changed history. HarperCollins. Birx, D. (2022). Silent invasion: The untold story of the Trump administration, Covid-19, and preventing the next pandemic before it's too late. Harper. Bridgman, A., Merkley, E., Loewen, P. J., Owen, T., Ruths, D., Teichmann, L., & Zhilin, O. (2020). The causes and consequences of COVID-19 misperceptions: Understanding the role of news and social media. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, 1(3). Covid Crisis Group. (2023). Lessons from the Covid war: An investigative report. PublicAffairs. Fauci, A. S. (2024). On call: A doctor's journey in public service. Viking. Gadarian, S. K., Goodman, S. W., & Pepinsky, T. B. (2022). Pandemic politics: The deadly toll of partisanship in the age of COVID. Princeton University Press. Grossman, G., Kim, S., Rexer, J. M., & Thirumurthy, H. (2020). Political partisanship influences behavioral responses to governors' recommendations for COVID-19 prevention in the United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(39), 24144–24153. Hatcher, W. (2020). A failure of political communication not a failure of bureaucracy: The danger of presidential misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The American Review of Public Administration, 50(6–7), 614–620. Kamenetz, A. (2022). The stolen year: How COVID changed children's lives, and where we go now. PublicAffairs. Klinenberg, E. (2024). 2020: One city, seven people, and the year everything changed. Alfred A. Knopf. Macedo, S., & Lee, F. (2025). In Covid's wake: How our politics failed us. Princeton University Press. McSwane, J. D. (2022). Pandemic, Inc.: Chasing the capitalists and thieves who got rich while we got sick. Atria/One Signal Publishers. Nocera, J., & McLean, B. (2023). The big fail: What the pandemic revealed about who America protects and who it leaves behind. Portfolio. Perry, S. L., Whitehead, A. L., & Grubbs, J. B. (2020). Culture wars and COVID-19 conduct: Christian nationalism, religiosity, and Americans' behavior during the coronavirus pandemic. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 59(3), 405–416. Slavitt, A. (2021). Preventable: The inside story of how leadership failures, politics, and selfishness doomed the U.S. coronavirus response. St. Martin's Press. Witt, J. F. (2020). American contagions: Epidemics and the law from smallpox to COVID-19. Yale University Press. Wright, L. (2021). The plague year: America in the time of Covid. Alfred A. Knopf.
The MAGA movement Allcott, H., Boxell, L., Conway, J., Gentzkow, M., Thaler, M., & Yang, D. (2020). Polarization and public health: Partisan differences in social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. Journal of Public Economics, 191, 104254. Bratich, J. (2021). 'Give me liberty or give me Covid!': Anti-lockdown protests as necropopulist downsurgency. Cultural Studies, 35(2–3), 257–265. Cooper, P., & Lampropoulou, S. (2024). China virus, kung flu, and MAGA: Countervalues and sociological fractionation on Twitter as evidenced by pro- and anti-Trump discourses in relation to Covid-19. Discourse, Context & Media, 57, 100758. Fischer, F. (2022). Post-truth populism and scientific expertise: Climate and Covid policies from Trump to Biden. International Review of Public Policy, 4(1), 115–122. Gollwitzer, A., Martel, C., Brady, W. J., Pärnamets, P., Freedman, I. G., Knowles, E. D., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2020). Partisan differences in physical distancing are linked to health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(11), 1186–1197. Hart, P. S., Chinn, S., & Soroka, S. (2020). Politicization and polarization in COVID-19 news coverage. Science Communication, 42(5), 679–697. Jacobson, G. C. (2020). Donald Trump and the parties: Impeachment, pandemic, protest, and electoral politics in 2020. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 50(4), 762–795. Koo, G. H., Johnson, T. J., Lee, T., & Jia, C. (2024). Politically contested beliefs: Support for Trump better predicts having inaccurate beliefs about COVID-19 than conservative/Republican political identity. Mass Communication and Society, 27(4), 792–819.