disease

Book review – Duel Without End: Mankind’s Battle with Microbes

7-minute read
keywords: epidemiology, history, pandemics

Like every other species on the planet, humans suffer from infectious diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other microorganisms. What sets us apart is a set of nifty tricks—the fruits of several centuries of scientific and medical advances—that allow us to strike back and gain a measure of control. And yet, as Norwegian professor of medicine Stig S. Frøland writes, this is a duel without end: we can win many battles, but we will never win the war. This book, driven by his interest in history and backed by his medical expertise, provides a good all-round introduction to the history of infectious diseases and the many ways in which we have sought to prevent and cure them.

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Book review – Parasites: The Inside Story

7-minute read
keywords: parasitology, popular science

For many people, parasites top the list of nature’s most unwanted creatures. For biologists, however, they offer a window into the ecology and evolution of their hosts, while a full understanding of an ecosystem needs to take its parasite fauna into account. Parasites: The Inside Story offers an engrossing and well-illustrated introduction to some of these processes. However, the brevity of the chapters and the input from three authors does turn this into a bit of a medley that might leave readers wanting more.

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Book review – Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus

9-minute read
keywords: epidemiology, pandemics, virology

Back in March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic first swept around the world, I reviewed David Quammen’s 2012 book Spillover for background reading. It looked at the risk of zoonosis: the spilling over of an infectious disease from animal into human populations. Quammen warned, and gave voice to many others who similarly warned, that the next big disease outbreak might very well be viral, in particular RNA viruses such as coronaviruses. Other authors quickly wrote books within the first year of the pandemic (I reviewed some of them), but not yet Quammen: “early in 2021 I decided to keep quiet for a while and listen” (p. 282). Finally, in October 2022, his book Breathless provided us with his insights into COVID-19 and the virus SARS-CoV-2.

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Book review – The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe

8-minute read
keywords: epidemiology, history, pandemics

The medieval bubonic plague pandemic was a major historical event. But what happened next? To give myself some grounding on this topic, I previously reviewed The Complete History of the Black Death. This provided detailed insights into the spread and mortality caused by the Black Death, which was only the first strike of the Second Plague Pandemic. With that month-long homework exercise in my pocket, I was ready to turn back to the book that send me down this plague-infested rabbit hole in the first place: The World the Plague Made by historian James Belich. One way to characterise this book is that it retells the history of Europe from 1350 onwards as if the plague mattered.

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Book review – The Complete History of the Black Death (Second Edition)

11-minute read
keywords: demography, epidemiology, history

Earlier this year, Princeton University Press published The World the Plague Made. Since I do not know all that much about the medieval plague pandemic known as the Black Death, I innocently said to myself: “let’s do some homework”. Coincidentally, Boydell Press recently published The Complete History of the Black Death by Norwegian emeritus professor of history Ole J. Benedictow, which is a substantially updated version of his 2004 book The Black Death 1346–1353: The Complete History. Just a little bit of homework… Little did I know that I would spend the next 38(!) days soldiering my way through this tome, which is an unprecedentedly long time for me. Did this exercise result in a deeper understanding of the plague? On many levels, yes, but with some caveats, and a note that this book is not light reading.

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Book review – Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive

7-minute read
keywords: immunology, popular science

Our lives depend on a functioning immune system, but few of us understand how it works. And fewer still can explain it because, to quote Ed Yong: “immunology is where intuition goes to die“. Thus, Philip Dettmer, the creator of the wildly successful popular science YouTube channel Kurzegsagt, has written this chunky book. An entertaining crash course in immunobiology, it does a wonderful job at introducing all the moving parts that make up this byzantine system.

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Book review – Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime against Humanity and Nature

7-minute read
keywords: environmental history, warfare

Whenever war breaks out, our concern is understandably first and foremost with the human casualties. The tremendous environmental toll tends to take a backseat. However, environmental destruction can and has long been an effective military strategy. In Scorched Earth, historian Emmanuel Kreike surveys four centuries of environmental warfare around the globe to show it is neither uniquely Western nor the unwanted love child of modern science and technology.

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Book review – Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19

10-minute read

From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been one of the big questions. The default assumption for many has been zoonosis: a natural spillover event where an infectious disease jumps from an animal host into the human population. But could it have escaped from one of the several virology laboratories in Wuhan? Initially cast aside as a conspiracy theory, the idea has slowly been gaining credibility. Viral is a disconcerting book that considers what we know so far. Though the smoking gun remains missing, the circumstantial evidence raises several red flags. Given the increasingly heated and polarised discussion around this topic, I started reviewing this book with some trepidation.

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Book review – Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History

7-minute read
keywords: environmental history, epidemiology, microbiology

It might sound crass to write that the COVID-19 pandemic is just the latest in a long line of infectious disease outbreaks, but a little perspective helps. Historian Kyle Harper previously impressed me with his study on the role of climate and disease in the decline of the Roman Empire. In Plagues Upon the Earth, he offers a global, multidisciplinary environmental history of infectious disease, showing that it is a force that has both shaped and been shaped by human history. This magnificent book stood out as much for its nuance and academic rigour as it did for its readability.

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Book review – The Contamination of the Earth: A History of Pollutions in the Industrial Age

8-minute read

The Industrial Revolution has been a mixed blessing. Although it improved living standards and brought material prosperity to many, humanity and the environment have paid a high price, not least in the form of pollution. The Contamination of the Earth catalogues the many forms of past pollution but also examines the social and political aspects of it. In other words, how people were affected by it and responded to it, and how legislation and politics allowed it to happen, to persist, and to only grow with time. This sprawling and information-dense environmental history work does full justice to this large and serious topic, but be prepared for a read that is neither light nor uplifting.

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