Epidemics Through Time, together with the accompanying Learning Activities Book, is a text which is ideally suited to the new Social Studies curriculum. This book aims to encourage students to think about disease as a global as well as a New Zealand or personal issue. The epidemics that have raged through the population over the centuries do have a voice in the modern world. Plague has never died out. When it erupted in India in 1994, comparisons with 1347 were immediately made. News reports quoted medieval chroniclers. The Middle Ages were speaking again, this time to the 20th century. The content and the exercises for students provide a wide variety of material which cover current issue perspectives in particular and are consistent with the three processes identified in the new curriculum, namely: Inquiry - Values exploration - Social decision making.