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A review by kyra_ann_writes
Fauci by Michael Specter
4.0
Overall, I would say that I really enjoyed this book. If my rating only addressed the rendering of Dr. Fauci's life and impact, it would easily get 5 stars. Though I've always had respect for Dr. Fauci, I admire him all the more for his resolve, compassion, and tenacity amidst difficult (and often unnecessarily politically mired) circumstances. I also appreciated the direct and simple explanations of zoonotic diseases and evolving gene-editing technologies. I went through a phase in high school of reading all the books on zoonotic diseases I could find, and this book can join that bookshelf in more of a tangential way .
I docked a star for a book that I otherwise really loved because some of Specter's language seemed to reinforce dichotomies that don't really exist. In one place in particular, he asserts that after the Enlightenment, "Science replaced magic. Knowledge replaced faith." Language like this often presses into the somewhat exhausting notion that science and religion are somehow mutually exclusive, which couldn't be further from the truth. It's much more complicated than that.
I docked a star for a book that I otherwise really loved because some of Specter's language seemed to reinforce dichotomies that don't really exist. In one place in particular, he asserts that after the Enlightenment, "Science replaced magic. Knowledge replaced faith." Language like this often presses into the somewhat exhausting notion that science and religion are somehow mutually exclusive, which couldn't be further from the truth. It's much more complicated than that.