riverrun pre-empts historian's take on today's four horsemen

Quercus imprint riverrun has pre-empted a book about unsung heroes who are grappling with key threats in our age from historian and Wellcome Prize-shortlisted author Emily Mayhew.

Introducing readers to "extraordinary people and institutions", according to Quercus, War Pestilence Famine Death: The Four Horsemen and Those Who Seek to Save Us will be "the story of the new heroes of our age, people who are largely unsung, underappreciated and unknown, who are creating solutions to the problems most of us are unaware of, but which threaten us all".

Combining history and scientific analysis to write about the future, a focus for Mayhew will be NGOs, scientists, researchers, academics and volunteers whose work on fungal pathogen control, antibiotic stewardship, medical archaeology, biomechanical modelling and international humanitarian law is changing lives and our future. Mayhew herself is historian in residence in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College, London.

On the basis of Mayhew's proposal, world rights were acquired from Imogen Pelham of Marjacq. Publisher Jon Riley said: "Everyone is familiar with the four horsemen of the apocalypse, age old symbols of the threats to our very existence. But when we think of them we do so with outdated ideas of what these threats now mean, failing to see how deeply interlinked they are in our time. In this important book Emily Mayhew explains what the serious battles are on all of these fronts."