Spillover is eerily prescient today, with COVID-19 widespread across the globe. But this book was written in 2012, before the West Africa ebola outbreak, before COVID. Through the book Quammen follows scientists into bat caves, across the jungles of central Africa and into the offices of universities around the world to better understand zoonosis, that is, how to diseases jump from animals to humans.
A friend of mine didn’t like Quammen’s habit of including himself in the story, but I found his personal thoughts on traveling to the Ebola River (!) in the Congo, or helping net bats with epidemiologists in Asia, to be riveting. Through the book Quammen leads the reader along a deep and complex story at just the right pace and the right level of detail. This is also the only book I’ve ever read that tells how science actually gets done, and he illustrates accurately how the actual work, from the trenches (or frequently in this case, caves) of sample collection, to the analysis and collaboration with colleagues, to publishing and review and revision as new insights come to light. Science is a process, and he writes about it well.
The last chapter is intensely prophetic for our current time at the height of the coronavirus pandemic Highly recommended to all.
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