Mark Honigsbaum

I’ve read a lot of pandemic and infectious diseases books over the last two years, and I have to say that The Pandemic Century is right at the top of the list. What it doesn’t cover in breadth of diseases, it covers in great depth and detail. It’s interesting in the way it combines the science and the public reactions to various outbreaks.

The book opens with the Spanish flu, but it’s the later chapters that really grabbed my interest, simply because they haven’t been covered in show more other books. There’s the outbreak of plague in California followed by psittacosis and Legionnaire’s disease. (I did not know the story on how it got the name). The other chapters are devoted to more recent and well-known epidemics and pandemics, such as Ebola, SARS, Zika and HIV/AIDS. The chapter on Zika was very interesting because I don’t think it’s been covered in as much detail elsewhere. As is customary with pandemic books these days, this edition (2020) mentions COVID-19 in its early stages. It’s quite encouraging to see how far science has come since then, in terms of research on the disease, vaccines and treatments.

What really sets The Pandemic Century apart is the level of research and detail. If you’re that kind of person, you can entertain friends and family with interesting facts about the diseases and treatment (e.g., Ebola is more likely to cause hiccups than other haemorrhagic diseases, why you should avoid nebulisers with aerosolised disease). The breakthroughs in research as well as the missteps are also well documented, as is the public response to ‘parrot fever’ and the ‘Philly killer’. It can be quite dramatic as the scenario unfolds, but I found this was toned down a lot with the more recent diseases. My only complaint was that my copy has tiny print, so while it was easy to carry round, it was at times difficult to read for long periods. (Although, I did drop the book during chapters to find out more about the diseases – a sure sign of a piqued interest!) This will satisfy the need to read about these diseases in more depth, in an engaging, easy to read fashion.

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This book takes an historical look at pandemics, starting with the Spanish Flu and ending with the Zika virus outbreak in 2015. I'm told a later version of the book has been released with a chapter on the current COVID-19 pandemic. I really enjoyed this book. I learned a lot. I didn't know there was a plague outbreak in L.A. in 1924 and had never heard of parrot fever. I also liked reading about the AIDS and SARS pandemics, which I remember well...it gave me a new perspective.

What I show more struggled with was the author's use of scientific and medical terminology without defining the terms. I spent a fair bit of time on Google while reading some sections. But, all in all, I thought it worth the effort.

The book is, on one hand, terrifying. We learn to deal with one pandemic only to fall prey to another. As humans continue to encroach on wildlife habitats, it seems we will unleash more viruses. And throughout history, we have politicians denying the existence of pandemics and people who refuse to modify behaviours to reduce risk.

On the other hand, the book was comforting. We have survived past pandemics, and we will continue to do so. The dedication of medical researchers -- their intelligence, perseverance and courage --- has always been amazing. show less

From the Spanish Flu of 1917 onwards to the Zika outbreak of 2015, humanity has been wracked by a series of pandemics. In this book Honigsbaum considers each in turn and relates the people and the research that contained them. First published in 2019 the final summary is chilling in its prediction of another global pandemic and the reasons why - this was written before the Covid-19 situation and yet is completely accurate in its logic.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Even if we were not going show more through a global pandemic now, the science and stories are amazing. The section on the discovery of coronaviruses is apt and the idea that pandemics are spread because of increased travel is explained clearly. Although I suspect that a certain amount of knowledge of biology is needed to understand the details this is still an erudite and intelligent book show less

(this review was originally written for bookslut)

The Fever Trail presents a fascinating story that, in my opinion, could have been better written. I was very excited when my review copy arrived in the mail. I had visited the book's website, which was very well done and it left me eager to read the book. The book promises to be the story of Richard Spruce, Charles Ledger, and Sir Clements Markham, three European men who journeyed to South America in attempts to bring back cinchona, the tree show more which produces quinine, a drug used to treat malaria -- however, the book is about much more than that. It starts with the South American expeditions, then rambles through the effects of malaria on various battles in military history, then finally ends up by talking about the current efforts to develop a malaria vaccine.

The story itself is very interesting, peopled as it is with so many under-appreciated heroes risking death in order to save the endangered cinchona tree and deliver a reliable source of quinine to the world. At the time during which most of the book is set, cinchona trees grow only high in the mountains of South America. Malaria, of course, is not so confined, being widespread throughout much of Africa, Europe, and Southern Asia. Once the Europeans arrived in the Americas, they introduced malaria to the Western hemisphere as well. Getting cinchona back to Europe not only meant surviving the mosquito-ridden Amazon (at a time when people didn't know that mosquitoes caused malaria, and so didn't take adequate steps to protect themselves), then the trek up into the Andes, and avoiding head-hunting natives, it also meant currying favor with the local governments, who had often outlawed the export of any cinchona plants or seeds. Wars, fires, and theft also had to be avoided. Then, of course, once the plants and seeds had been collected and put on a boat for export, there was the not at all trivial matter of transporting them across the Atlantic alive. The odds were not good. This is gripping stuff.

However many times Mark Honigsbaum's writing left me dreading picking the book up again. From the very beginning his writing style seemed rather random. He defined words whose meaning anyone with a dictionary could have discovered and that he might only have used once, but then phrases like "tertiary fever," which you can't just look up and which appear throughout the book were never explained. The pacing of the book was all over the place, and the jumps back and forth in time and the sheer number of important players in the book often left me baffled. The unfamiliar geography was also a challenge, and though there were maps at the front of the book, I don't recall them ever being referred to in the text, so they weren't nearly as helpful as they might have been.

Overall, I would not recommend this book to someone just looking for an enjoyable popular science book. If that's all you want, read Carl Sagan, or pick up a copy of And the Band Played On. But if you want to know more about malaria and the colonization of South America (as well as much of the Southern Hemisphere), this book is crammed with diverting tidbits and useful information. I do feel smarter for having read this book, and isn't that what we read non-fiction for? show less