najemok 's review for:

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis

5.0

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Michael Lewis masterfully tells the story of the unsung heroes of the pandemic and their decades long fight to have a plan in place. Carter Mecher, Charity Dean, Bob Glass, and Joe DeRisi are just a few of the quirky characters that come together over time to fight the pandemic. There contributions are widely unknown to everyone but the few people who have worked directly with them but they are important enough to be celebrated. In typical Lewis story telling the heroes are everyday goofs just trying to do good. For example the basic model for studying how a disease spreads came from Bob Glass helping his daughter with a high school science fair project. And Carter Mecher is so non-descript/non-threatening of a human that he just seamlessly blends in where ever he goes. People forget he's even there until suddenly his ideas are absorbed by whatever location he's working in (Bush administration, Obama administration, VA Affairs, CDC, etc). He's like the Forrest Gump of pandemic response, always at the right place at the right time.