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paloma_sanchezh's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
medium-paced
3.5
An easily accessible read for those interested in getting to know of the historical context and impacts of major diseases and the challenges posed to the communities affected by them. I found most of the data interesting and this is certainly an entertaining book -except for the first chapter, where it goes into a technical explanation of how viruses come to be, the rest of the book reads fast and is enjoyable -in terms of the writing I mean, as one cannot help but shudder when learning of the human loss caused by diseases. My only issue with the book is that it mainly focuses on the impacts these world-wide pandemics had on the Western World -and the English-speaking world to be more specific. Except for Ebola, whose outbreaks have been contained to Africa most of the time for some unknown reason, the author only describes the impacts pandemics such as smallpox, measles, influenza, AIDS, had on the United States and the United Kingdom. And that bothered me somehow -if we are speaking of diseases that affect all humanity without discrimination, why focus only on those two countries? The answer is obvious but still, I think there are issues that affect human beings equally and hence, it is important to hear those experiences and voices.
shanaqui's review
informative
slow-paced
2.0
Not much new for me here, but at times it broke into surprising levels of technical detail (like the specific receptors used by particular strains of influenza in order to enter cells). I don't know if I'd recommend it: it's quite dry, and yet the technical details I craved were few and far between. It leans more toward descriptive history.
I feel like it needed a more thorough rewrite given the current pandemic, because that dated it very fast.
I feel like it needed a more thorough rewrite given the current pandemic, because that dated it very fast.
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