"The Chickens Fight Back": Pandemic Panics and Deadly Diseases that Jump From Animals to Humans

by David Waltner-Toews

Containing important information about the coronavirus, this comprehensive, easy-to-follow primer on pandemics, epidemics, and the panics they ignite around the world also shares solutions for a safer, healthier future. “A quiet little gem of understanding in a cacophony of panic and fear.”  
— Quill & Quire , STARRED review Authored by a leading epidemiologist, this engrossing book answers our questions about animal diseases that jump to humans—called zoonoses—including what attracts them to humans, why they have become more common in recent history, and how we can keep them at bay.  Almost all pandemics and epidemics have been caused by diseases that come to us from animals, including SARS, Ebola, and—now—Covid-19. Epidemiologist, veterinarian, and ecosystem health specialist, David Waltner-Toews, gathers the latest research to profile dozens of illnesses in  On Pandemics . Chapters are broken into short, dynamic explainers, each one tackling a different disease. Readers will discover: Coronaviruses, such as those that cause SARS and Covid-19, have likely made bats their home for centuries. Until SARS came along, we didn’t know they were there, nor do we know how many other death-dealing viruses might be living undetected in wildlife.  On Pandemics  shows the greater impact of animal-borne diseases on our world, and encourages us to re-examine our role in pandemics, if not for our own health, then for the health of our planet. Published originally in 2007 as The Chickens Fight Back: Pandemic Panics and Deadly Diseases that Jump from Animals to Humans , this book has been updated in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Waltner-Toews makes truly entertaining reading.”
— Globe and Mail “A page-turner presented with irreverent humour and many hair-raising anecdotes.”
— Vitality Magazine

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Health, Ebooks, Audiobook, History, Medical

240 pages, Paperback

First published March 23, 2007

About the author

David Waltner-Toews is a veterinary epidemiologist specializing in diseases people get from other animals. A University of Guelph Professor Emeritus and founding president of Veterinarians without Borders-Canada, he was the recipient of the inaugural award for contributions to ecosystem approaches to health from The International Association for Ecology and Health. He is the author of more than twenty award-winning books of poetry, fiction, and science, including, in 2020, “On Pandemics: Deadly Diseases from Bubonic Plague to Coronavirus” and "The Inter-Pandemic Backyard Chicken Book: a retirement memoir, with chickens."

Reviews

[George Ilsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating look at the connections in the natural world, and how all too often we fail to appreciate these important relationships. Much modern "scientific" thinking is brought into question by this author, who is both a veterinarian and an epidemiologist.

A word of warning: parts of this text can make your skin crawl. The tiny creepy crawlies are everywhere and they are out to get you! Or . . . we might try to take an approach where we learn to live with our neighbours. Monoculture in farming is a particular threat and makes us especially vulnerable (both to disease and in terms of food supply).

Humans try to pretend they can subjugate nature, but there are always unintended consequences. Lock up 10,000 chickens in a windowless barn, spray them daily with antibiotics, and they may hatch a pathogen that will kill you.

This book was published in 2007 and has become more relevant, more important, with each passing year.

[Cav · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not like this one at all.
During this 2020 climate of COVID, I am reading just about everything about epidemiology I can get my hands on.
While the book contains some interesting information, I found the writing to be fairly run-of-the-mill, dry, and somewhat tedious...
I also found it incredibly grating and irritating that a book about pandemics and epidemiology contained so much political rhetoric. Author Waltner-Toews makes liberal use (pardon the pun) of much of the standard leftist jargon here; there are many references of "privileged" white people, "marginalization", "power dynamics", and other assorted tidbits of lingual tripe that identify partisan speech.
Waltner-Toews says about treating malaria: "...Any programs to prevent these diseases caused by blood parasites must include a political agenda to create more egalitarian societies and a more just global distribution of wealth..."
And just what "political agendas" does he envision achieving this utopian "just distribution"? Communism?? It's not clear. It seems that he is implying that people need to send more money to under-developed countries, and not that these countries need to find ways to become self-sustainable on their own.
If the problems faced by these countries could be solved by money alone, they wouldn't still have these problems today, after many trillions of dollars in foreign aid over the last few decades.
The author is clearly politically-motivated, and the book is him evangelizing his leftist worldview. I really don't like it when a book does this. The editors should have reigned him in.
Also to my point; he places the blame for the African outbreak of Ebola, caused by the African cultural practice of eating bushmeat, and the African lack of proper food sanitation measures, which was exacerbated by the lack of adequate African health care facilities on... (wait for it) ...other people (White Europeans and/or North Americans are strongly implied).
Holy mental gymnastics, Batman!
The author continues on with African Ebola, suggesting that "wealthy countries and wealthy classes within countries are the economic beneficiaries of their disease." Say what??
I'm not exactly sure how "wealthy people" benefit from donating money to humanitarian groups like Médecins Sans Frontières, which (along with many other NGOs) helped fight Ebola on the frontlines of West Africa in 2014, strictly on humanitarian grounds and a desire to help their fellow human beings. What ridiculous "reasoning"...

This will be the 22nd book about epidemiology that I have read this year, and I would put it right near the bottom of the list.
If you are interested in epidemiology, virology, and/or a history of many of the diseases talked about here, you will find many other better-written books than this...
No, I would not recommend this book.
1.5 stars.

[Claudia Rynkowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting and thought-provoking read.

The bacteria responsible for deadly diseases and viruses are all around us. These bacteria can cohabit with humans on the same planet without disturbing us, but if humans disrupt these precious ecosystems that the bacteria thrive in, they will find new homes. Well, this book shows that humans are both greedy and ignorant when it comes to taking care of our Earth and everything that lives on it. Everything is connected, in the context of globalization, climate change, ecological collapse, species extinctions, human overpopulation, huge economic and political disparities, and unintended consequences of well-meaning intervention.
The stakes of a person contracting a zoonotic disease are raised if humans engage in the most intimate contact of all: eating another species.

Essentially, the main message here is go vegan, but the author does a tremendous job of not showing his bias or shoving his opinion down one’s throat. Even with all of the scientific terms, this book wasn’t difficult to get through, and made me laugh once or twice thanks to the author’s witty commentary on the actions of humans.

“In trying to control everything, we have to come face to face with ourselves.”

[Madison A Cooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not a book about pandemics. This was a book about zoonotic diseases where some of these diseases led to a pandemic but many would be classified as epidemics or simply outbreaks. I believe the author happened to be writing a book about zoonoses when COVID-19 went into full force so he threw in some mentions of SARS-COV2 and re-titled the book to attract more interest. But no this was not about pandemics. AIDS was hardly mentioned, TB was only mentioned in reference to bovine TB, and smallpox was maybe acknowledged once.

The author is passionate, I will give him that. He loves his rats and feces and weird facts about graphic displays of a virus’ ins and outs. However, he does not write this book in an easy to follow or laymen-focused manner. The times he attempts to add humor or light to a topic honestly made me uncomfortable. He referred to a virus as a “cool, athletic anorexic”. Come on! That’s so weird and does not make the reader feel more connected to the topic.

I will say that anyone who—in the comments—said this was a politically left propaganda book…you are incorrect. The author has his biases but I don’t attribute them to overtly political backings. If you find the terminology of “marginalization” “social justice” “environmental justice” or any mention of pro-vaccination to be a liberal mindset, you should probably re-evaluate the way you view being a good human being. Vaccination isn’t political (mandates? Yes. The concept of vaccines? No). Social justice and racial justice are not political. So please just let science be science and if that doesn’t match your political ideology, maybe those beliefs aren’t based in real fact.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk to the zero people that probably read all this hahaha.

[Allegra S · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book makes me think that David Waltner-Toews would be a great lecturer. His dry wit, akin to the 90s sitcom Frasier, made me laugh out loud at several points. He would be great at teaching a course where you need to learn about these diseases. He would tell stories and make the material accessible and organized.

What I wanted more of in this book was the conclusions and inferences he's drawn from his experience in the field. I wanted a little bit more opinion and a little more connection between the chapters. We should change policy x, we should stop factory farming, we should stop eating animals, etc. It is such a broad range of topics I don't have quite enough information to draw my own conclusions and would have appreciated more of his.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book!

Stay home!

Not hard to follow the basic rules. Don't be selfish!

4.2/5

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Waltner-Toews presents a very readable albeit rather terrifying overview of zoonoses - diseases that spread from animals to humans through a variety of infection routes. The author is an academic but his writing style is refreshingly uncontaminated with "academese". He writes more like a journalist or a decent novelist, i.e. like someone who knows how to write. If he carries antibodies to the academic writing disease, we should extract them and administer them to all other academics.

I read the book during the COVID-19 pandemic, which the book pre-dates by more than a decade. The book also pre-dates the 2012 MERS outbreak. As COVID-19 is shaping up to be one of the deadlier zoonoses of recent times, and probably the most expensive, it's likely to stimulate its own raft of books and new editions of older books about infectious diseases. The book does cover the somewhat similar 2003 SARS coronavirus outbreak, which like MERS was easier for the global community to contain - ironically by being more debilitating and deadlier on a per-case basis.

I like the fact that Waltner-Toews takes an ecosystem view of disease, in contrast to the narrow clinical view that focuses on vaccines and drugs. He also mentions the reality of man-made climate change and its impact on infectious diseases (frequently making things worse). However, while he does mention or at least allude to the connection between improved living conditions and increased greenhouse gas emissions, he doesn't always make this clear when he touts the drop in infectious disease as a function of said improved living conditions. In other words, to fight disease by giving people better lives, we generally have to destroy more planet. The book could have been a little more clear about the need for figuring out less environmentally destructive ways to improve living conditions and fight the spread of disease.

The author also presents a contradictory figure when it comes to fossil-fueled travel. On the one hand, he acknowledges that jet airliners are superb tools for spreading newly emerging diseases around the globe in mere hours or days (as we are seeing now with COVID-19). Flying also burns copious fossil fuels. But on the other hand, much of the book constitutes the author's personal jet-powered travelogue. Granted, we can probably make a stronger case for an infectious disease expert to travel around the world to study infectious diseases than for, say, Donald Trump to visit his golf resorts. But the climate system and microbes don't care why people fly around on jets - they respond the same way to our greenhouse gas emissions and carting germs around, respectively. Thus the author might have at least pretended to care about exploring ways to investigate diseases without having to drag individuals around the world - perhaps by using the Internet to work remotely with the indigenous personnel who already live there. If we are to have any hope of staving off devastating climate change, air travel is just one of many fossil-fuel-dependent activities that we must greatly curtail. An environmentalist who flies is like an anti-tobacco activist who smokes - either one may still be effective, but probably not as effective as a behaviorally consistent advocate can be.

As a fan of composting, I appreciated the author's brief closing-chapter nod to the practice:

"How to compost manure and dead animais, instead of burning or burying them, should be in the training manual for every person dealing with infectious diseases. Composting not only kills most bacteria and viruses but also generates useful fertilizer."

However, the Selected Readings section is very light on clues for finding that training manual. Given the vast number of excellent books about composting, at least one title would seem worth a mention. Waltner-Toews does cite his own Ecosystem Sustainability and Health: A Practical Approach, which also mentions composting, but it doesn't go into any more depth.

In a few places Waltner-Toews mentions the health trade-offs of pet ownership. On the one hand, pets can be potent transmitters of disease to humans (especially the troubling practice of bringing "therapy" animals into hospitals full of immunocompromised patients). On the other hand, anecdotal evidence along with a few studies suggest health benefits to people who interact with pets. However, the author could put this on much firmer footing by using physically active people as the control group. Specifically, when trying to assess the health benefits of something, such as pets, or wine-drinking, or particular diets, etc., one should use people with the highest baseline health as the control group. Those are physically active people. In fact, the more physically fit people are (the higher their aerobic work capacity is, from regular hard training), the lower their all-cause mortality rates are. Thus the salient things to know, when assessing the supposed health benefits of something, are: (1) does it improve health more than physical exercise does?; and (2) how much benefit, if any, does it provide in addition to physical exercise?

If we use sedentary people as the control group - people with the lowest baseline of health - then almost anything beneficial to health will show its benefit, but we won't know how it compares to or synergizes with the most beneficial factor we have available.

Waltner-Toews does not mention alternatives to "meat" pets, namely artificial (robotic) pets. Granted, these may not have been very common when the book was written, but robotics technology is steadily improving as a function of Moore's law. Robotic pets also feature in anecdotes about helping elderly people feel better. As robotic pets are built objects, they will also have their own environmental costs for manufacture and operation. As they are not living organisms, they should be no more likely to spread diseases than other household items (which may act as passive fomites for some germs, but almost certainly not as the efficient active collectors and incubators that cats and dogs are). Thus it would be interesting to see a system-level comparison of meat pets vs. robotic pets for environmental impact and disease transmission on the negative side of the ledger, and as therapy for their human users on the positive side.

[Colleen Earle · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I’ve read a lot about of communicable disease, this book doesn’t offer anything new.
Would be good for someone new to the topic.
Enjoyed the social commentary.

[Shirley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt a bit rushed and jumbled at times. Covered much of the same ground as David Quammen's Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, but in a much faster and more shallow way.

Still, the author's experiences were extremely interesting and I'd definitely like to read more by him. His writing is engaging and humorous and it's great to see a veterinarian's perspective on zoonotic diseases. (For instance, this is someone who will point out the the black plague made fleas ill as well and wonder how we could possibly treat them.) And he reiterates the importance of improving the daily living conditions of human animals as well as recognizing the complex systems of the world and how we, as human animals, relate to them.

[Sam Still Reading · Rating 2 out of 5]

Continuing my reading of anything and everything related to pandemics, I couldn’t help but jump at one with pandemic in the title. This is an updated edition of David Waltner-Toews’ The Chickens Fight Back, published in 2007. There are references to COVID-19 in this book but primarily this is a book about various diseases which can be transmitted to humans via animals. Waltner-Toews is an epidemiologist and veterinarian and it’s clear that his passion is in diseases that cross the animal kingdom.

If you’re looking for a book that talks about the people and the steps taken during a pandemic, this isn’t it. The book is firmly rooted in the biology and transmission of zoonoses. Waltner-Toews clearly has a lot of knowledge and experience in this field, much of it pertaining to animals (which makes sense because they are the ones transmitting these diseases to humans). For me, I’m not as interested in the animal vectors except that they exist. There is also a reasonable amount of microbiology in this book, which is rather dry at times. The author has a considerable amount of wit and certainly isn’t afraid to put his ideas, including politics and religion forward. More humour may have improved this book for me, particularly after a day of living the pandemic reality. At times, it was too dry to hold my interest. At others, it was fascinating. The problem for me was that I didn’t know what I was going to get each night, which led to me not picking up the book and watching Netflix…

I think if you’re looking for a general education on zoonoses this would be of interest. But although these micro-organisms can and have caused epidemics and pandemics, this book is not focused on the human response. I feel the title is misleading to the lay reader and the original title would have sufficed for the second edition.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com

[Principessa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reading the title "On Pandemics", I think to myself: "At this time in which a new virus strain keeps the whole world in a state of panic and so few real facts are available, a book that appears to contain scientific epidemiological insights is exactly the right thing to read."
Oh boy was I wrong. I was looking for epidemiological knowledge and I got a lot of subjective political assessments made with a dictionary of when an epidemic really is an epidemic.
I would have liked to see more in-depth insights without all this political commentary.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very Interesting and super sickening. I think that I will stay away from animals for a while or maybe alittle bit longer than that. The book is informative, but can waver on the boring side.

[Bojan Ristivojevic · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic read. I loved the wit and humour mixed with facts and flowing narative. Higly recommended!

[Jesse Field · Rating 3 out of 5]

Our pandemic reading group gave mixed reviews to this one, with some pointing out that David Quammen covers the same territory with more robustness. I think the author’s aggressive wrestle with the Christian context, and strong arguments for higher environmental consciousness, may have annoyed others.

But I liked Dr. Waltner-Toews’ anecdotal accounts of zoonoses, diseases that transfer to humans from animals. As a veterinarian researcher, his deep empathy for animals informs a wonderful sense of humor, and a broad understanding of life that I find attractive. Whether it’s cats, dogs, cows, dogs or even fleas and bacteria, he presents their life patterns in a light-hearted and fun prose:

The adults live on warm-blooded animals and eggs are laid on the animals, but many of them fall off into rugs and carpets, where, like jelly beans and chocolate eggs left unfound under the sofa cushion on Easter morning, they will hatch in two to twelve days (the median of which is seven).
The yellowish-white, bristling worms—teenagers of the insect world—feed on adult flea feces (full of dried blood) hiding out in the carpets and pet-resting places where they were dropped off. They are graced with anal struts, the flea version of tight jeans. Whereas people use their struts to unhinge each other’s psyches, the flea larval struts are hooks used to propel them in search of the ultimate hamburger (fecal blood casts from the adults) to stuff into their chewing mouthparts. They feed, grow, and molt three times, a process that can take anywhere from nine (three times three, under perfect conditions) to two hundred (or maybe two hundred and forty-three, which is a multiple of three) days. After the third molt, the larva spins a small cocoon, within which, like a most excellent pupil of the natural order, it pupates from seven days (under perfect conditions) to one year (usually two to four weeks, the median of which is three), after which the now-mature adult flea breaks out, seeking a host on which to feed.

This empathetic humor informs his sense of life as a brief time on the planet, with a mind capable of sorting narratives to add to knowledge, and maybe make life better, though progress should never be taken for granted. At one point in his conclusion Waltner-Toews concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic, with its multiplicity of models and policy responses, could bode well for a more democratic approach to global survival. But the danger remains that authoritarianism and elite forces will concentrate power into their hands and reduce overall stability. Any student of philosophy dreams of real progress; any student of history remains skeptical, if not pessimistic. Waltner-Toews’ conclusion caps of a charming set of anecdotes with intriguing provocations (“panarchy”?), without filling in the details, philosophical or historical. Fair enough.

[Stephie Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author presented in each chapter a few zoonotic diseases and what lessons can be learned from how they were caused and the responses given to them. He covers a wide range of illnesses from ancient to present times.

At Kindle location 3380 the author wrote: “If we have known for many years what needs to be done to prevent pandemics, why haven’t we acted?” For some of the same reasons we haven’t acted to the change the trajectory of climate change. At Kindle location 3548 he states: “I was once informed, by someone concerned about overpopulation and the limits to growth, that, as an epidemiologist, by saving people’s lives, I was part of the problem.” That person sounds like Scrooge. Anyway, not helping those who face dire life situations is immoral when there are the means to do so. No one decided--”oh, let me be born.”

This book is quite interesting, but I found it was lacking in certain ways. Mainly, the chapters didn’t seem to be mapped out as it should have been; they tend to jump around a bit. There was one thing the book had that many others on this topic lack; this was the author’s sense of humor.

Want to learn something about are interactions with other animals and the diseases we share with them? This would be a good choice.

[Tracy Trofimencoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best non-fiction books I have read in 2020. It was completely fascinating and although at times, a hard read as I am not a scientist. But Waltner-Toews wrote this book to appeal to any reader. He is funny at times even when dealing with such a grave subject matter in the middle of this global pandemic. I learned a lot about how and why disease spreads, and how and why something is classified as a pandemic while others times, it is not. His profession as a veterinarian was also really interesting as I have three dogs. I learned much about how animals can unintentionally spread disease, how some communities are reluctant to accept help from the medical community, and how medical professionals are seriously undervalued in our global society. It was a great book and I highly recommend it.

[Lailita 💕 Nesbitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A interesting and thought provoking read.

Could be hard to follow at times. For the most part it is written in such a way, that even if you don’t have a back round in epidemiology it is easy to grasp. Uses every day relevant examples and ties them into the science of disease and the environment and how everything is connected.

As a nurse who worked the entire pandemic I really appreciated this read . As some one who is aware of environmental change and the affects it has on people , I appreciated learning evening more how animals, humans, the environment, and diseases are all interconnected.

Highly recommend!

[Jonathan Rocheleau · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title of this book is somewhat misleading - as other reviews have stated it is (partly) a book of anecdotes about select zoonotic diseases. Intermixed with these are various lengthy tangents on the life experiences of the author and digressions on policy failures that (sometimes) have something to do with outbreaks or are merely pet peeves of the author.

There are interesting tidbits in this book, but there is also a hefty amount of dross to sift through. Given the slimness of the volume, it is disconcerting that it feels like it could have used a more assertive editor.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The content is more interesting than most pandemic books' because it's written by a veterinarian/epidemiologist so it goes beyond just talking about germs and diseases to include the broader perspective of how social factors influence the risk of serious infectious disease. Unfortunately, the audio narration is distracting with bizarre mispronunciations, not just of foreign words, but also of scientific terms and place names. Also, for my taste there was too much autobiographical "Let me tell you about my trip to Kathmandu" stuff.

[Jacqueline]

Coronaviruses, such as those that cause SARS and Covid-19, have likely made bats their home for centuries. Until SARS came along, we didn't know they were there, nor do we know how many other death-dealing viruses might be living undetected in wildlife. On Pandemics shows the greater impact of animal-borne diseases on our world, and encourages us to re-examine our role in pandemics, if not for our own health, then for the health of our planet. - "bookshelf.ca"

[Dylan Siebert · Rating 2 out of 5]

The problem with this book was that the author couldn't decide whether he was writing a fact-filled comedy sketch or an earnest entreaty for some kind of global socioeconomic change of some kind. Which was too bad, because I think I liked the general drift of where he was heading, he just never quite got there. But it was the humour that made me frequently want to put the book down and avoid this person if I ever run into him on the street- the dark and biting kind of jokes that push the author's religious and political views into even the most unrelated subject matter.

Nevertheless, I was motivated to read something on pandemics that was written pre-2019, and I learned some things that made reading to the end worthwhile:

- Viruses, bacteria, and parasites live all around us as well as inside us all the time, and most are basically harmless or just annoying in their traditional hosts: for example, the natural home of the flu virus is in ducks and geese. It's only when their populations and/or behaviours get significantly out of balance with the rest of nature that epidemics happen.

- Things can get out of balance when significant new contact points between potential host species occur, as when hunger drives African villagers to eat more monkeys and gorillas than they otherwise would, or when pigs and monkeys are slaughtered in close proximity in a crowded Chinese market.

- Things can also get out of balance when traditional host species are packed into denser, more vulnerable environments, as when chickens are kept in massive industrial barns, or when migrating birds are funnelled into fewer and more crowded routes due to loss of habitat.

- Globalization has made pandemics more likely, by making the world more crowded, more interconnected, more dependent on industrialized farming, and less economically resilient.

- Nature produces nightmare diseases. It's just one of the things she does. There are dozens of potential pandemics out there, most of them currently just hanging out around hot countries or poor people, and you can't realistically act proactively against of all of them. (Unless you cure poverty first. Go figure.)

- Culture and cultural sensitivity play a much bigger role than science in addressing epidemics. For example, if dogs are important to your culture, you're not going to cull the strays from your village no matter what the nice Western scientist lady says about tapeworms. [Similarly, if liberty and human rights are important to your culture, you're not going to stay home no matter what the nice president man says about flattening the curve]. Understanding local priorities and values is essential for encouraging the simple behavioural changes that can make more of a difference than the complex gene-sequencing or vaccination efforts beloved of scientists.

- For some reason, outbreaks and epidemics among humans seem to go away on their own. (Remember what happened to SARS and West Nile Virus? Yeah, neither do I). This is a baffling mystery to me, and I wish the author had addressed this question more thoroughly rather than concentrating solely on the animal origins of human epidemics.

- Never inhale mouse poo. Just never do it. It's one of the worst ones.

All in all, I guess I learned more than I thought I did from this book. It was an effort. Recommendations for better-written texts on standard epidemiological practice pre-2019 are welcome.

[Jonathan Northcote · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting and, on some levels, potentially depressing book (definitely lightened by the author's dry sense of humour) which draws our attention to how much all life on this planet is interlinked - and that everything has consequences and a ripple effect. Well worth a read for anyone with a concern for the future.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very insightful about the complexities of the world we live; sometimes almost depressingly so. Written with humor, a few times the asides and densities of technical language left me a bit at sea.

The last chapter that summarizes the author's perspective on going forward is a must read.

[Shawna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't hold my interest.

[Grahambryson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spotify audiobook

[Linda Lpp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unfortunately I had to return it to the library before I complete the book. But hopefully it will come up as available soon.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

It could have been a little more friendly for the general reader. I nodded off a few times. Also there was not a lot of information about Covid-19 which is to be expected.

[Ciarán Murray · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an eye-opening book on how fragile and connected the ecosystem is and how humans affect it. Not for someone with a queasy stomach and its quite dry reading (or in my case listening) at times.

[Ralph-Peter Hendriks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book. It rambled a bit, but the point was quite clear. We need take a new look at diseases and how they fit into our world, and how we manage them. Everything is inter-related.

[Zguba Salemenska · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended for a unique and needed perspective on this issue.