Exploring the Risk of Animal-Borne Infections and the Potential for a Global Human Pandemic: Spillover

Amazon Customer: A recommended read. Informative book that tells a great deal of information.

United States on Dec 20, 2023

Marcopolo: Very interesting book, plenty of references. I read it during this pandemic period, when it was impossible (at least for me) to think of anything else.

Italy on May 24, 2021

M&M: Muy interesante, informativo y ameno. No es un inglés técnico, sino periodístico

Spain on Feb 06, 2021

Ana Xochilt Bale Ramirez: La entrega fue rapidísimo ! Excelente servicio
El libro maravilloso

Mexico on Dec 31, 2020

ErnieSalmi: I listened to the Audible version of 'Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic', a couple years ago before COVID-19, and again in October 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I have enjoyed numerous Quammen books. They are all top rate.

At the start of my first Quammen book, 'The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction', I was annoyed with both the travelogue content and what struck me as name dropping. The use of a travelogues and recognition of sources are the writing style of Quammen. Fortunately, this style is appropriate, effective and in many cases essential for presenting the 'Spillover', or zoonosis story.

The Spillover book encompasses more than the natural sciences. The book combines worldwide journeys, adventure storytelling, frontline epidemic reporting, clinical labs, animal labs, field studies, geographical details, social descriptions, and, of course, the sciences. The field animal studies, and associated travelogue, are essential for understanding the zoonosis, and associated epidemics. The epidemics include both human and non-human animals. Travel is to China, India, Bangladesh, Australia, the USA, South...

United States on Nov 13, 2020

Vincent Guyonnet: With the COVID19 pandemic ravaging the world, this book explains brilliantly through concrete examples the circumstances under which pathogens are able to jump from animals to humans (with a few going the other way around). With each chapter dedicated to one specific pathogen, the author takes us around the world, tracking down the origin of the "jump".

Canada on Oct 30, 2020

Leandro Santana de Oliveira: Livro de autoria de David Quammen, escritor reconhecido pelos suas obras sobre ciência, natureza e viagens. Escrito em 2012, mas lido durante a pandemia de Covid-19, é de uma atualidade fenomenal.

Spillover é um termo técnico para doenças que migram de animais para seres humanos. Muito se fala de um aumento de pandemias e do surgimento de novas doenças a partir de preconceitos (étnicos e políticos). Não sou da área de saúde ou ciência, mas lendo o livro fica claro que a destruição de florestas, a falta de alimentos ou do processamento dos alimentos são as causas mais frequentes de novas doenças.

O livro é de fácil leitura e bastante envolvente. O autor visitou in loco boa parte dos locais descritos no livro, portanto, cada capítulo é uma aventura na qual o leitor fica esperando o que vai acontecer e quem será o “culpado” (uma raposa-voadora, um primata superior, um esquilo?). O mais intrigante é que para muitas doenças nem sequer há uma resposta definitiva, como é o caso do Ebola, onde existem suspeitos, mas não condenados.

Destaco especialmente o capítulo referente ao vírus HIV, que tem seu surgimento rastreado ao início do...

Brazil on Jul 13, 2020

Neuron: This is the best book I have read in a long time. It is like a mystery thriller played out in various exotic locations around the world, that simultaneously, gives the reader intriguing and accurate knowledge about various exotic but dangerous pathogens that have the potential to forever change life as we know it. In other words, if you would put the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, a travel diary book by Bill Bryson, and an Agatha Christie thriller in the mixer, you would get something like this. It just doesn't get better than this!

David Quammen's writing is accessible and throughout the book I was amazed by his ability to explaining difficult scientific concepts in a way that makes the reader understand... even crave science. Though I have read many scholarly articles, no single text I can recall have given me such a deep understanding and appreciation for a scientific subject. I have always been fascinated by bacteria and viruses, however this book multiplied my fascination and my appreciation for the scientists that study viruses and other pathogens in humans as well as in other species.

This book is about spillovers (surprise!). A spillover is when a virus or...

United States on May 21, 2013