Soon after I finished the first chapter, on the Hendra virus, the library recalled this much sought-after new book, so I read the rest from my frayed copy, whose first thirty-three pages fanned out like feathers-an irresistible dog toy-when I tried to hold the book upright.

As such, we are highly vulnerable to microbes that “spill over” into new host populations-wild geese, macaques, gorillas, and bats, as well as domesticated livestock and pets. Quammen’s premise is precisely the opposite: we are nature, situated (obliviously) within complex, finely tuned ecosystems, which we all too blithely disrupt. People like me sometimes need our books ravaged by dogs (that most invasive of species) in order to puncture our notion of nature as something “out there,” beyond our insulated windows and caulked doors. Norton & Company, 2012 ) tracks the intrusion of zoonotic viruses into human populations. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic(W. I resurrected what I could, but I had to order a copy from the library. It looked like the work of Tiger, my omnivorous husky-terrier mix. But I returned later to a crime scene: the book splayed on the floor, its hard cover dismembered, and the first chapter merely shreds hanging from a naked spine. In a journey that takes him from southern China to the Congo, from Bangladesh to Australia, David Quammen tracks these infections to their source, and asks what we can do to prevent some new pandemic spreading across the face of the earth.Īs we continue to feel the global impact of Covid-19, discover the book that predicted this viral disaster and the science that could stop the next one in its tracks.When the package containing David Quammen’s Spillover arrived on my doorstep one morning, I cracked the book from its cardboard shell and set it on my bed for evening reading. Diseases that were contained are being set free and the results are potentially catastrophic. Read this gripping, timely book about the transmission of deadly viruses from animal to human populations, and how we can fight the current Covid-19 pandemic.Īs globalization spreads and as we destroy the ancient ecosystems, we encounter strange and dangerous infections that originate in animals but that can be transmitted to humans. A gripping, timely book about the transmission of deadly viruses from animal to human populations, and how we can fight the current Covid-19 pandemic

The spillover book