The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age
By Nathan Wolfe
3.5/5
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About this ebook
“One of the world’s foremost virus hunters” (Financial Times), Stanford University biologist Nathan Wolfe reveals the origins of the world’s most deadly diseases and how we can combat and stop contagions.
A “mix of biology, history, medicine, and first-hand experience [that] is potent and irresistible,”* The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age shares information Wolfe uncovered on his groundbreaking and dangerous research missions in the jungles of Africa and the rain forests of Borneo to provide an in-depth exploration of how lethal viruses evolved alongside human beings; how illnesses like HIV, swine flu, and bird flu almost wiped us out in the past; and why modern life has made our species vulnerable to the threat of a global pandemic.
In a world where each new outbreak seems worse than the one before, Wolfe points the way forward, as new technologies are brought to bear in the most remote areas of the world to neutralize these viruses and even harness their power for the good of humanity. His provocative vision of the future will change the way we think about viruses, and perhaps remove a potential threat to humanity’s survival.
“An astonishingly lucid book on an important topic. Deeply researched, yet effortlessly recounted.”—*Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies
Nathan Wolfe
Nathan Wolfe is the Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor in Human Biology at Stanford University and Director of Global Viral Forecasting, a pandemic early warning system which monitors the spillover of novel infectious agents from animals into humans. Wolfe has been published in or profiled by Nature, Science, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, Wired, Discover, Scientific American, NPR, Popular Science, Seed, and Forbes. Wolfe was the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship in 1997 and was awarded the National Institutes of Health (NIH) International Research Scientist Development Award in 1999 and the prestigious NIH Director's Pioneer Award in 2005. He is the author of the book The Viral Storm.
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Reviews for The Viral Storm
13 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Audio. Ratings aren't very high for this book, but I found it worked very well as an audiobook. It is not very technical, and, unsurprisingly, tends to focus on the author's own areas of research. He does a fair bit of name dropping, and promotion of his own organization and research, but it is all relevant to the subject.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I don't want to say that I'm a professional bug chaser or viral freak, but out of all the books I read and love about disease, viruses, infection, etc, this was my least favorite.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I am not sure what the central premise was, behind this book by Richard Preston. On the whole, I was disappointed by the book. I had the impression that Richard Preston was more intent in talking about himself, and less about the spread of viruses and disease. The book was full of anecdotes and stories. While entertaining, it did not serve the stated purpose of informing us how, and why, we will are faced with the prospect of an increasing number of pandemics. The section on the tools being developed to help us predict pandemics was vague. Finally, he did not discuss the societal and sociological aspects that impact the spread of disease. This is a disappointing book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book is probably better than the ratings on LibraryThing suggest. Having read enough of these types of books it was refreshing to read one by a top expert in the field who brings a multidisciplinary approach yet keeps it accessible to the average reader. This is not a journalist version made for movies. The ultimate purpose is to raise awareness for the need to predict outbreaks before they happen, something which Wolfe himself is attempting to build. It's a noble (Nobel) aim indeed so I can't fault the motivation, or even criticize the scheme. Probably the best analogy is this is a book long TED Talk.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I gave the book only 2 stars. Heard the interview with the author on NPR and was expecting much more from the book than it delivered. I was expecting something meaty about virus hunting. What I got was pablum. Which in viruses is a good thing, but not in books.