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Summary
Summary
Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu to the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 "parrot fever" pandemic, through the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last one hundred years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms.
In The Pandemic Century, a lively account of scares both infamous and less known, Mark Honigsbaum combines reportage with the history of science and medical sociology to artfully reconstruct epidemiological mysteries and the ecology of infectious diseases. We meet dedicated disease detectives, obstructive or incompetent public health officials, and brilliant scientists often blinded by their own knowledge of bacteria and viruses. We also see how fear of disease often exacerbates racial, religious, and ethnic tensions--even though, as the epidemiologists Malik Peiris and Yi Guan write, "'nature' remains the greatest bioterrorist threat of all."
Like man-eating sharks, predatory pathogens are always present in nature, waiting to strike; when one is seemingly vanquished, others appear in its place. These pandemics remind us of the limits of scientific knowledge, as well as the role that human behavior and technologies play in the emergence and spread of microbial diseases.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
By focusing on nine major pandemics, from the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak to the 2015 Zika eruption, science journalist Honigsbaum (A History of the Great Influenza Pandemics) explores what has been learned about combating deadly disease over the past century. He offers a mixture of gripping storytelling and insightful science as he dissects the causes of and responses to each of these medical disasters. Whether it's plague in Los Angeles in 1924, Legionnaires' disease in Philadelphia in 1976, or the worldwide SARS outbreak in 2003, Honigsbaum argues that several important factors typically accompany pandemics. First, officials often mislead the public about what is actually occurring. Second, once the media catches on, it sensationalizes the outbreak, spreading panic. Third, medical researchers often "become prisoners of particular paradigms and theories of disease causation," causing them to ignore impending threats. In today's world, he argues, pandemics will likely be a growing problem, because human activity, from global warming-linked emissions to increased international travel, helps "microbes to occupy new ecological niches and spread to new places." Despite all the problems he exposes, Honigsbaum also demonstrates that scientists have responded with increasing rapidity to each outbreak. Alternately chilling and optimistic, Honigsbaum's reporting on a recurrent public health issue deserves wide attention. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Powerful accounts of a dozen epidemics from the last 100 years.Journalist and medical historian Honigsbaum (Arts and Sciences/City Univ., London; A History of the Great Influenza Pandemics: Death, Panic and Hysteria, 1830-1920, 2013, etc.) begins this lively, gruesome, and masterful book with the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected 500 million people and may have killed more than 100 million. Many that followed, including AIDS, Ebola, Legionnaires' disease, SARS, and Zika, are familiar to most readers. Lost to historybut no less terrifyingwere the Los Angeles plague epidemic of 1924 and the wave of parrot fever that swept the nation after 1929. All mobilized the best scientific resources of the time, with results ranging from dramatic to ineffectual. Fortunately, all eventually died out, but more are inevitable as humans crowd into cities as well as into the wilderness and jungle, where new organisms await; douse our bodies' bacteria with antibiotics; and exchange viruses with pets and domestic animals. "Time and again," writes the author, "we assist microbes to occupy new ecological niches and spread to new places in ways that usually become apparent after the event. And to judge by the recent run of pandemics and epidemics, the process seems to be speeding up. If HIV and SARS were wake-up calls, then Ebola and Zika confirmed it." Most pandemics arrived without warning. Physicians and epidemiologists quickly described what was happening, often wrongly at first but eventually getting it right after massive research, brilliant insights, and no lack of courage. As Honigsbaum amply shows, politicians and journalists often ignored bad news until they couldn't and then opposed measures that might harm the local economy. Since even medical experts tended to overreact at first, the media can be excused for proclaiming the apocalypse, but they showed no lack of enthusiasm.Avoiding the hyperbole that contemporary media relished, Honigsbaum mixes superb medical history with vivid portraits of the worldwide reactions to each event. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
This engrossing history of the fight against pandemic disease explores how outbreaks emerge usually when humans insert themselves into the disease organisms' environment in a way that provides a bridge to new victims and how medical and epidemiological experts fight against them. It's a war, argues medical historian and journalist Honigsbaum, that we'll never be able to win, since new diseases will always confound our expectations. Honigsbaum explores the implications of this situation by investigating outbreaks and near misses from the last century, including Spanish flu, Legionnaires' disease, AIDS, SARS, Ebola, and Zika as well as outbreaks of plague in 1920s Los Angeles and ""parrot fever"" across the U.S. in the 1930s. Combining history, popular science, and policy, he describes each pandemic with journalistic immediacy, emphasizing the patterns that characterize responses to them. He makes the case that reliance on conventional scientific wisdom and technology has hampered the fight against pandemics by narrowing our perspectives and encouraging fear and hypervigilance. In response, he calls for attention to the social and cultural contexts of disease that, though it may not be able to prevent future pandemics, can help to understand and contain them. An important and timely work.--Sara Jorgensen Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
CITY OF GIRLS, by Elizabeth Gilbert. (Riverhead, $28.) Set amid the showgirls, playboys and gossip columnists of Manhattan's 1940s bohemian demimonde, Gilbert's new novel - her first since "The Signature of All Things" (2013) - is a pitch-perfect evocation of the era's tawdry glamour and a coming-of-age story whose fizzy surface conceals unexpected gradations of feeling. BAKHITA: A Novel of the Saint of Sudan, by Véronique Olmi. Translated by Adriana Hunter. (Other Press, $27.99.) A reimagining of the real-life story of St. Josephine Bakhita, captured as a child in Darfur and liberated in Venice. THE QUEEN: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth, by Josh Levin. (Little, Brown, $29.) During the Reagan era, the press immortalized Linda Taylor as "the welfare queen," a fur-wearing, Cadillac-driving woman who bilked the system for years. Levin reveals her as a scammer so protean that she had gone by at least eight different names by the time she was 22. SPRING, by AN Smith. (Pantheon, $25.95.) The third novel in Smith's seasonal quartet - consumed with Brexit, refugee detention, social media - suggests we're hurtling toward the horrific. NO VISIBLE BRUISES: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, by Rachel Louise Snyder. (Bloomsbury, $28.) Snyder highlights an epidemic of unacknowledged violence. Fifty women a month are shot and killed by their partners, and she explores the problem from multiple perspectives: the victims, the aggressors and a society that turns a blind eye. THE PIONEERS: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West, by David McCullough. (Simon & Schuster, $30.) McCullough's account of the early history of the Ohio Territory is a tale of uplift, with the antislavery settlers embodying a vision of all that was best about American values and American ideals. THE PANDEMIC CENTURY: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris, by Mark Honigsbaum. (Norton, $29.95.) Despite science's best efforts, pathogens keep crashing our species barrier: In the past century, they include Spanish flu, H.I.V. and Ebola. Honigsbaum analyzes each to explain pandemics. RANGE: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein. (Riverhead, $28.) Challenging conventional wisdom, this provocative book cites data to argue that in a complicated world, generalists are more successful than specialists. LOUDERMILK: Or, The Real Poet; Or, The Origin of the World, by Lucy Ives. (Soft Skull, paper, $16.95.) This clever satire of writing programs exhibits, with persuasive bitterness, the damage wreaked by the idea that literature is competition. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Choice Review
The Pandemic Century is a fascinating study of how various societies, international organizations, and scientists have responded to global disease threats. His study covers a broad swath of history including the Spanish flu, AIDS, and Zika. Honigsbaum (University College London) argues that human actions disturb ecological equilibriums and thus lead to the spreading of disease. Medical researchers and scientists, he contends, are so beholden to their assumptions that they often fail to successfully identify and devise strategies for dealing with newly discovered pathogens. The range of topics and the approach make this work ideal for students. The book's emphasis on the environmental and social causes of disease should engender lively classroom discussion. Honigsbaum argues that while great strides have been made in the ability to fight and contain disease, "we should recognize that this knowledge is constantly giving birth to new fears and anxieties." Honigsbaum concludes that "as the pandemic century draws to a close, we know better than to trust the pronouncements of experts." The book contains notes, but no bibliography. On the whole, it offers lively coverage of epidemic disease in the 20th century that should appeal to students and specialists alike. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic levels. --John Rankin, East Tennessee State University
Library Journal Review
The past 100 years has seen significant advances in medicine, but diseases maintain their frightening power as scientists fight microscopic menaces to contain the next pandemic. Medical historian and City University, London, lecturer Honigsbaum (The Fever Trail) tracks influenza, parrot fever, bubonic plague, legionnaires' disease, AIDS, SARS, Ebola, and Zika to expose how they become global threats. Stories cover how dedicated epidemiologists and disease investigators followed clues to discover: Was the parakeet the killer? Where did AIDS really come from and why are diseases that were relegated to distant, isolated areas now rampaging through urban centers? Why are bacteria and viruses once benign now deadly? The answers are complicated by governments that downplay the severity of epidemics to protect businesses that reject change and whose activities spread disease, cultural norms that increase the risk of infection, and most disturbing, the innocent carrier who boards a plane or enters a hotel room and starts a pandemic. VERDICT Readers of Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague will enjoy this up-to-date look at disease that engagingly balances science with politics and culture. A solid read for anyone interested in medicine or even a good mystery. [See Prepub Alert, 10/29/18.]-Susanne Caro, North Dakota State Univ., Fargo © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
Prologue: Sharks and Other Predators | p. 1 |
Chapter I The Blue Death | p. 17 |
Chapter II Plague in the City of Angels | p. 63 |
Chapter IV The "Philly Killer" | p. 145 |
Chapter V Legionnaires' Redux | p. 175 |
Chapter VI Aids in America, Aids in Africa | p. 193 |
Chapter VII Sars: "Super Spreader" | p. 237 |
Chapter VIII Ebola at the Borders | p. 277 |
Chapter IX Z is for Zika | p. 317 |
Epilogue: The Pandemic Century | p. 361 |
Acknowledgments | p. 369 |
Abbreviations | p. 373 |
Notes | p. 375 |
Illustration Credits | p. 421 |
Index | p. 423 |