Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

I know what I want to be when I grow up. David Quammen. Okay, fine, you heard me moon over his The Boilerplate Rhino earlier this summer, but really, each time I read one of his books I appreciate what he does all the more...and can only wish that I might be a globe-trotting, tome-writing, scientist-cum-author. So, what's the story with Spillover?

In his latest book, Quammen has set out to understand the origins of any number of zoonoses (diseases that transfer from animals to people). He provides a detailed examination of some of the better known ones - such as AIDS, ebola, and yellow fever - as well as ones most readers have probably never heard of: Nipah, anyone? Hendra? Marburg virus? Typhoid Mary makes an appearance, as does Henrietta Lacks (a great, great read, but before I started the blog). To cover such ground, literally and figuratively, Quammen criss-crosses the planet, from Bangladesh and the Congo to Washington, DC, and the Outback, speaking with molecular biologists, immunologists, epidemiologists and the like, rendering their science-speak into understandable, and highly readable, prose.

The opening pages provide an entirely-too-vivid description of Hendra, a virus that spills from bats to horses to humans with terrible consequences for equines and people alike. I skimmed them, to be honest, and fervently prayed that such imagery would not be a regular occurrence. It wasn't, although many of the descriptions did give me flashbacks to my days working for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, when I first became aware of the myriad, bizarre ways a person might suffer and, not rarely, die.

This is a long book, over 500 pages, broken into nine sections each containing roughly a dozen mini-chapters. Occasionally, by necessity, the language gets a bit technical (which Quammen acknowledges readily, cheekily adding that if his reader has followed, say, the evolutionary stages of a virus, that reader has a promising future in biology). Still, the writing is engaging and the adventures are certainly never dull (searching out primate dung in the far reaches of Africa and capturing bats - flying foxes, specifically - in Southeast Asia, for example, to say nothing of the logistics that are often involved...on second thought, I want to be David Quammen, but with flush toilets and room service).

My only real complaint is that the last 30 or so pages seem to drag in comparison to the rest of the book. The hypothetical story of the Cut Hunter and Voyager, for example, are completely superfluous given the painstaking work in the preceding hundreds of pages. All the same, though, for anyone with an interest in science, off-the-beaten-path travel, and good writing, you won't find a better book this year. Just be sure to skim (or skip) those first few bloody pages.