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4.42 AVERAGE
4.42 AVERAGE
I know, reading a book about zoonosis during the COVID-19 pandemia is quite banal, but in my defense, I had Spillover on my to-read list since 2013, so it was just a case of finding the right occasion. It's, quite simply, one of the best popular science book I've ever read, and probably the best written. Quammen's prose is terse, clear and engaging, and he has that rarest of gifts, of making even the most abstruse scientific and medical concepts understandble without sacrificing exactitude. As for the content: Spillover is both terrifying and uplifting, often in the same page. Terrifying because it makes you realize how extremely fragile and how unbelievably vulnerable we homo sapiens still are in the face of disease (as the current pandemia is more than amply showing); uplifting because its pages are filled with meetings and discussions with remarkable doctors, researchers and scientists, the front lines of a war we probably will never really win, but we are getting better and better in fighting.
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Lo so, leggere un libro sulle zoonosi durante la pandemia di COVID-19 è banale, ma a mia discolpa posso dire che ce l'ho sul comodino virtuale dal 2013, quindi si trattava solo di aspettare l'occasione giusta. Spillover è, molto semplicemente, uno dei migliori libri di divulgazione scientifica che abbia mai letto, e probabilmente quello meglio scritto in assoluto. Quammen scrive in maniera concisa, chiara e coinvolgente, e dimostra di possedere il rarissimo dono di riuscire a rendere comprensibili anche i più astrusi concetti medici e scientifici senza sacrificare la precisione. Quanto al contenuto: il libro è insieme spaventoso e confortante, spesso nella stessa pagina. Spaventoso perché ti fa rendere conto di quanto noi homo sapiens siamo ancora estremamente fragili e incredibilmente vulnerabili di fronte alle malattie (come la pandemia in corso sta dimostrando più che abbondantemente); confortante perché le sue pagine sono piene di incontri con medici, ricercatori e scienziati straordinari, le prime linee in una guerra che probabilmente non vinceremo mai del tutto, ma che stiamo diventando sempre più bravi a combattere.-
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Lo so, leggere un libro sulle zoonosi durante la pandemia di COVID-19 è banale, ma a mia discolpa posso dire che ce l'ho sul comodino virtuale dal 2013, quindi si trattava solo di aspettare l'occasione giusta. Spillover è, molto semplicemente, uno dei migliori libri di divulgazione scientifica che abbia mai letto, e probabilmente quello meglio scritto in assoluto. Quammen scrive in maniera concisa, chiara e coinvolgente, e dimostra di possedere il rarissimo dono di riuscire a rendere comprensibili anche i più astrusi concetti medici e scientifici senza sacrificare la precisione. Quanto al contenuto: il libro è insieme spaventoso e confortante, spesso nella stessa pagina. Spaventoso perché ti fa rendere conto di quanto noi homo sapiens siamo ancora estremamente fragili e incredibilmente vulnerabili di fronte alle malattie (come la pandemia in corso sta dimostrando più che abbondantemente); confortante perché le sue pagine sono piene di incontri con medici, ricercatori e scienziati straordinari, le prime linee in una guerra che probabilmente non vinceremo mai del tutto, ma che stiamo diventando sempre più bravi a combattere.-
Well-written, fascinating exploration of zoogenic diseases (diseases that spread from animals to humans)--how they develop in animal populations and how they end up infecting humans. A little scary, but mostly very scientific.
informative
medium-paced
Emerging diseases, zoonosis, pandemics
I have always loved books about pandemics, yes, even before covid. In fact, when covid happened I couldn't read books about pandemics for a while. It was nice to come back to it. David Quammen is an excellent writer. He has reignited my love of good science writing. I plan to read his book about Covid next.
Quarantine reading #1
Started this quite a while ago when I first heard about the novel coronavirus. It took me a while to get through the first chapter because it's scary/graphic, but at this point in the pandemic I've accepted that the world is a scary place :)
Started this quite a while ago when I first heard about the novel coronavirus. It took me a while to get through the first chapter because it's scary/graphic, but at this point in the pandemic I've accepted that the world is a scary place :)
“To reside undetected within a reservoir host is probably easiest wherever biological diversity is high and the ecosystem is relatively undisturbed. The converse is also true: Ecological disturbance causes diseases to emerge.”
Quammen discusses how human health and ecosystem health are so intricately intertwined, a connection that too few are making despite our current pandemic status.
Quammen discusses how human health and ecosystem health are so intricately intertwined, a connection that too few are making despite our current pandemic status.
Well, I’m never going in a cave with bats, eating unknown game in a foreign county, petting pigs or ducks again. I now have a better understanding of zoonotic diseases, how something like COVID-19 could come to pass, and new respect for the scientists who have been at this game for a long time. This was an in-depth book, very sciencey at times, but the author tries (and usually succeeds) in making the material understandable to those of us without science backgrounds.
Outbreaks don’t just happen to us. “represent the unintended results of things we are DOING” and are at the “convergence of two forms of crisis”: ecological and medical. We keep encroaching into the wilds of the world, and these viruses who have been living and adapting for decades will eventually get into our worlds and our bodies.