A Modern Contagion: Imperialism and Public Health in Iran’s Age of Cholera places cholera (and also bubonic plague) into modern Iranian medical and political history, persuasively arguing that pandemic disease was a powerful driver for change across multiple fields. Cholera, Amir A. Afkhami writes, “not only shaped the adoption of new paradigms in medicine and health; it also changed Iranian perspectives on governance, influenced European imperial policy, unmasked social and political vulnerabilities, and caused enduring institutional changes” (3) during the Qajar dynasty (1796–1925). It is a bold claim, Afkhami explains, because historians of modern Iran have largely neglected disease, in part because the domestic research is so challenging. Afkhami overcame the limitations through decades of work in archives in multiple countries. The result is a book that makes an important contribution to both modern Iranian history and the global history of public health.