Book Title: The Rules of Contagion
Author: Adam Kucharski
Format: Kindle

Book Title:
The title of the book ' The Rules of Contagion ' is self-explanatory and need for the hour.

Book Cover:
The cover image of the book is a minimal representation of a contagious disease that must be caged and make it disappear.

About the author:
Adam Kucharski is an assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, working on global outbreaks such as the Ebola epidemic, avian influenza, dengue fever, and the Zika virus. He is a TED fellow and winner of the 2016 Rosalind Franklin Award Lecture and the 2012 Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize. He has written for the Observer, Financial Times, Scientific American, and New Statesman. He is the author of The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling. Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life, and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events, and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity, and death. Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation that exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive, funding over 14,000 researchers and projects in more than 70 countries
About the book:
The surprising science of contagion, and how it affects us all: from viral marketing to pandemics, financial panics, and gun violence

My review:
A book that must be read during the fighting times of COVID-19 and bring a change in ourselves by not spreading false news and panic news. The book very pragmatically explains to the model of how a piece of news spreads across dangerously than the disease whether it's an epidemic or pandemic.

What I like:
1. The profound explanation of what contagion is and its aftermath effects alongside the causes are explained in detail

2. On how a conspiracy or disbelief gets spread across the world which involves a virus or the flu or some health ailment is explained well.

3. Many practical examples are coherently explained that also create awareness amongst the readers.

4. The journey of Sir. Ronald Ross and a few others are found very interesting. I say this very strongly because I live near the Fever Hospital that was started on Ross's name at Hyderabad. It feels close to know him.

5. The most important thing in the book that is to be observed is how fake news is spread and how it affects every walk of life is very well explained.

6. Every chapter and example can be related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and thus the book behaves an eye-opener.

7. The responsibility as a citizen of any nation in order not to spread or believe fake news and hold the sanctity of humanity intact is the underlying lesson of the book.

What I didn't like:
At some places, I felt too much explanation is used which looked more like a textbook rather than a general book.

Narration:
Though a non-fiction book, the narration stands out because of the thorough explanation and description of various incidents, people, health concerns in the past around the world, illustrations in pictures and etc., The narration definitely hooks the readers to the book.

Language & Grammar:
Quality language with rich and technical vocabulary is found in the book.

My Final Verdict:
Right book at the right time!

Book Title: 4/5
Book Cover: 4/5
Inside the book: 4/5
Narration: 4/5
Language & Grammar: 4/5
Final Rating: 4/5

( )

Covers more than viral contagions. An interesting study of how ideas, panics, and yes viruses move through social structures. ( )

Written and published at the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, Adam Kucharski's book The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread - and Why They Stop had a unique momentum. The similarities between fake news, viruses like flu, SARS, and COVID-19, but also rumors and fairy tales are striking. Unlike you might expect, Kucharski doesn't present an overarching theory or model to explain and possibly predict every single viral outbreak, regardless of its nature. "In outbreak analysis, the most significant moments aren't the ones where we're right. It's those moments when we realize we've been wrong" concludes the author. Modelers have a saying: "If you’ve seen one pandemic, you’ve seen … one pandemic." In numerous cases, Kucharski offers the underlying facts, background stories, and context. It ranges from the WannyCry computer virus to Zika, measles, and smallpox to the Cambridge Analytica manipulation of data and experiments at Facebook to present different timelines to different people.

Despite the uniqueness of every virus, stages and contagion patterns can be recognized and used in modeling. The author looks to past models like Darwin's tree of life sketches and Ronald Ross' groundbreaking research of the spread of malaria and draws from literature, computer science, physics, sociology, and behavioral sciences. This authoritative work offers readers means to understand what is happening today, from storming the Washington DC Capitol to the dangerous delta variant of COVID-19 to the many, many links in tweets that remain untouched. ( )

I’m starting to run a bit low on pandemic/epidemic non-fiction, so it was time to cast my net a bit wider. When I saw the striking cover of The Rules of Contagion, I couldn’t resist this book marked as a biohazard. It’s an interesting look at not just how contagion works in infectious diseases, but in areas you normally wouldn’t expect to be contagious like financial crises, memes and tweets. I guess we could also add GameStop shares and short selling to that.

Note that this book is pre-COVID, so you won’t find any references here. However, Kucharski writes in such an engaging and practical way that you could apply your new found knowledge easily. The R (reproduction) number is explained well, as is herd immunity and the general shape of an epidemic/pandemic. There are some great examples of past epidemics and pandemics, from typhoid in London to swine flu and more recently, Zika. There are also economic examples, such as how the GFC occurred from a contagion point of view. (Too big to fail is really too much interconnectedness). From a health point of view, these sections were interesting but less relevant. But putting my economics hat on, it was a really refreshing way to look at why things happen. The section on ‘going viral’ on social media was probably the weakest overall for me. I understand how it fits within contagion, but it just didn’t seem to flow as nicely. (Plus there was the realisation that I’m not connected enough to those who can make things spread. So are influencers now super-spreaders?)

Kucharski uses examples, graphs and diagrams to explain the theories behind contagion from historical times to almost today. It’s easy to grasp and he uses practical anecdotes that today’s reader would have heard of to illustrate his points. My only quibble is that I would have liked the health and non-health contagion sections to be split a little more obviously. I’d love to see contagion revisited post-pandemic to see what improved knowledge and theories there are, and how they have been used.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com ( )

Adam Kucharski is a mathematician and epidemiologist, and Associate Professor for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His book The Rules of Contagion delves into the mathematical modelling being done to understand contagion in a broader sense than just the epidemiological one - looking across finance, online viruses and memes, gun violence and other areas of life where “things” grow and recede.

Kucharski definitely has a way with words which helps when you’re writing a book meant for a broad audience on the topic of mathematical modelling. He’s also someone who’s positioned to understand and convey these topics - being a professor whose background includes work for financial firms, doing analysis on the Ebola virus spread, and currently assisting the UK authorities in modelling the coronavirus. The book was published in the US in July of 2020 as the first wave of coronavirus was peaking here (and I think in the March 2020 timeframe in the UK).

I found much of this book very interesting and think Kucharski did a great job carrying us through some of the background around mathematical understanding of disease spread and the “theory of happenings”, and then how those tools came to be useful in the financial and online worlds. But as the book went on I do think that some of the additional examples became repetitive. The book ends with what I think is an acknowledgement that Kucharski and his fellow mathematical modellers are still early in understanding how these modelling tools can be of further use - with a final sentence about looking back to see how mathematical models were wrong in predicting past outbreak patterns, so we can improve as we move forward.

If you have an interest in math (or maths if you're British) or the history of math, or if you’ve wondered how epidemiologists came up with models for the impact of COVID then you will like this book. Kucharski’s writing style reminds me of Michael Lewis, so if you are a fan of Lewis’ books The Fifth Risk, The Big Short or Flash Boys I also think you’ll find this book interesting.

I read the audiobook, narrated by UK actor and book narrator Joe Jameson, whose voice is easy to listen to and whose narration helped bring out the author’s style. ( )