A masterpiece of science reporting that tracks the animal origins of emerging human diseases, Spillover is “fascinating and terrifying … a real-life thriller with an outcome that affects us all” (Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction).
In 2020, the novel coronavirus gripped the world in a global pandemic and led to the death of hundreds of thousands. The source of the previously … hundreds of thousands. The source of the previously unknown virus? Bats. This phenomenon—in which a new pathogen comes to humans from wildlife—is known as spillover, and it may not be long before it happens again.
Prior to the emergence of our latest health crisis, renowned science writer David Quammen was traveling the globe to better understand spillover’s devastating potential. For five years he followed scientists to a rooftop in Bangladesh, a forest in the Congo, a Chinese rat farm, and a suburban woodland in New York, and through high-biosecurity laboratories. He interviewed survivors and gathered stories of the dead. He found surprises in the latest research, alarm among public health officials, and deep concern in the eyes of researchers.
Spillover delivers the science, the history, the mystery, and the human anguish of disease outbreaks as gripping drama. And it asks questions more urgent now than ever before: From what innocent creature, in what remote landscape, will the Next Big One emerge? Are pandemics independent misfortunes, or linked? Are they merely happening to us, or are we somehow causing them? What can be done? Quammen traces the origins of Ebola, Marburg, SARS, avian influenza, Lyme disease, and other bizarre cases of spillover, including the grim, unexpected story of how AIDS began from a single Cameroonian chimpanzee. The result is more than a clarion work of reportage. It’s also the elegantly told tale of a quest, through time and landscape, for a new understanding of how our world works—and how we can survive within it.
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Appropriate is an understatement!!
Well written!!
Learn the path of viruses and the role of mankind!!
A wake up call!!!!
Extremely well written book about the dreadful diseases that can be transferred from animals to humans. The list includes nearly every nightmarish ailment you’ve ever heard of. David Quammen has taken a huge amount of science and conveyed it in the most engaging manner imaginable. I am awed by his talent.
A fascinating — and at times terrifying — look into the topic of “Zoonosis”, by which diseases “jump” from animals into humans. Influenza, ebola, and a host of others.
scary stuff about the virus connection between animals & humans that can make us sick or even die. Everyone should read this book – highly, highly recommend!
We all need to know this information. Quammen makes it understandable, and maintains our interest throughout.
Very interesting and informative, especially during these times of pandemic due to a corona virus — given that this corona virus almost certainly “spilled over” in some form from animal ‘reservoirs’ (probably bats) to humans. I.e. by. ‘zoonosis, a process that the author discusses in multiple contexts for multiple types of viruses.
This book, written in 2012, *anticipates* the ‘Big One’ — which apparently materialized apparently which nearly a decade later as the Covid-19 pandemic. (Note, however, that given a special sequence found in the RNA of Covid-19 — one that helps the virus to generalize cell invasion — Covid-19 virus MAY have been manipulated in the lab… possibly with no nefarious intent but with the intent of developing some type of broad-use vaccine.. Nobody knows, however.)
Excellent and informative on the origins of viruses. Easy to read.
If you want to know about Coronavirus and what it portends, read this!
A quite thorough and mandatory read for those who wish to understand why we’re suffering this current pandemic, and why there will be more.
A must read in today’s COVID-19 pandemic. Easy to understand for the lay person.
Excellent journalism and writing so everyone who is not a scientist can understand.
Detailed, maybe too much for some, but thorough and well organized.
An informative and interesting account of (mostly) viral infections that came to us from non-human sources. The author describes the pathway the microbes take to get to us, how these diseases were elucidated, their virulence and how man has tried to disarm them.
The only reason I couldn’t give this book a 5 is less than perfect proofreading, sentence structure, and spelling. The author is very familiar with the high standards of scientific papers, but doesn’t seem to think a that a book about scientific discoveries deserves the same care.
I know what I want to be when I grow up. David Quammen. Okay, fine, you heard me moon over his The Boilerplate Rhino earlier this summer, but really, each time I read one of his books I appreciate what he does all the more…and can only wish that I might be a globe-trotting, tome-writing, scientist-cum-author. So, what’s the story with Spillover?
In his latest book, Quammen has set out to understand the origins of any number of zoonoses (diseases that transfer from animals to people). He provides a detailed examination of some of the better known ones – such as AIDS, ebola, and yellow fever – as well as ones most readers have probably never heard of: Nipah, anyone? Hendra? Marburg virus? Typhoid Mary makes an appearance, as does Henrietta Lacks (a great, great read, but before I started the blog). To cover such ground, literally and figuratively, Quammen criss-crosses the planet, from Bangladesh and the Congo to Washington, DC, and the Outback, speaking with molecular biologists, immunologists, epidemiologists and the like, rendering their science-speak into understandable, and highly readable, prose.
The opening pages provide an entirely-too-vivid description of Hendra, a virus that spills from bats to horses to humans with terrible consequences for equines and people alike. I skimmed them, to be honest, and fervently prayed that such imagery would not be a regular occurrence. It wasn’t, although many of the descriptions did give me flashbacks to my days working for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, when I first became aware of the myriad, bizarre ways a person might suffer and, not rarely, die.
This is a long book, over 500 pages, broken into nine sections each containing roughly a dozen mini-chapters. Occasionally, by necessity, the language gets a bit technical (which Quammen acknowledges readily, cheekily adding that if his reader has followed, say, the evolutionary stages of a virus, that reader has a promising future in biology). Still, the writing is engaging and the adventures are certainly never dull (searching out primate dung in the far reaches of Africa and capturing bats – flying foxes, specifically – in Southeast Asia, for example, to say nothing of the logistics that are often involved…on second thought, I want to be David Quammen, but with flush toilets and room service).
My only real complaint is that the last 30 or so pages seem to drag in comparison to the rest of the book. The hypothetical story of the Cut Hunter and Voyager, for example, are completely superfluous given the painstaking work in the preceding hundreds of pages. All the same, though, for anyone with an interest in science, off-the-beaten-path travel, and good writing, you won’t find a better book this year. Just be sure to skim (or skip) those first few bloody pages.
(This review was originally published at: https://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2013/08/spillover-animal-infections-and-next.html)
Fantastic discussion of zoonoses. Well researched, clearly written. As a scientist I enjoyed his witty comments about some observations, contributions to the body of information. A weighty topic, presented in an easy to read and understand way whether you have a science background or not.
I love books like this. It is a horrifying truth about viruses and diseases. It’s fascinating and well written!
Very informative and interesting