Approximately 476,000 people are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease each year in the United States. Several more have delayed treatment due to improper diagnosis. But did you know that Lyme, a tick-born illness, was a military experiment gone wrong? 

Kris Newby is an award-winning medical science writer and author of BITTEN: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons. 

Bitten takes readers on a journey to investigate these claims, from tours of biological weapons facilities to interviews with biosecurity experts and microbiologists doing cutting-edge research, all the while uncovering darker truths about Willy Burgdorfer, the Lyme microbe’s discoverer, who revealed that he had developed bug-borne bioweapons during the Cold War. 

It also leads her to uncomfortable questions about why Lyme can be so difficult to both diagnose and treat, and why the government is so reluctant to classify chronic Lyme as a disease.