When I was at school in 1991, the terrible news came out that Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen, had died of HIV/AIDS. At the time, this virus was fatal in nearly everyone it infected. And yet, only 30 years later, we now have drugs that completely prevent the disease. This amazing breakthrough is just one of the many success stories that inspired my passion for infectious diseases, the way our immune system can fight them off, and how science can help us fight infections. The list of books goes from fiction about when infections go wrong and to popular science about how scientists ensure the nightmare scenario never happens.
I read this book as a teenager, and it sparked my fascination with infectious diseases and what can go wrong if they get out of control.
The book combines science with a really tense plotline. It is where I first heard of "interferon," part of the human immune system that fights viruses. This has brought me full circle, my lab researches interferon and viruses, and now I get to write books about it, too!
From the author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes a captivating thriller about a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism, which threatens to annihilate human life.
Five prominent biophysicists have warned the United States government that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, a probe satellite falls to the earth and lands in a desolate region of northeastern Arizona. Nearby, in the town of Piedmont, bodies lie heaped and flung across the ground, faces locked in frozen surprise. What could cause such shock and fear? The terror has begun, and…
I loved this book because it gives a dark vision of what could go wrong if we fail to control pandemics. I read this book in 2019–just before the COVID-19 pandemic, which gave it a terrifying reality!
I am a lab scientist, and my work can focus on somewhat abstract ideas about infection, but this book inspired me to think about the (huge) human impact.
'Best novel. The big one . . . stands above all the others' - George R.R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones
Now an HBO Max original TV series
The New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction National Book Awards Finalist PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.
One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in…
Peter Medawar was one of the most influential figures in immunology; I was (and continue to be) inspired by his thinking about how to do research.
His book speaks to me about how I can do my best science and better understand the immune system in order to protect people against infectious diseases in the future.
To those interested in a life in science, Sir Peter Medawar, Nobel laureate, deflates the myths of invincibility, superiority, and genius instead, he demonstrates it is common sense and an inquiring mind that are essential to the scientist's calling. He deflates the myths surrounding scientists,invincibility, superiority, and genius instead, he argues that it is common sense and an inquiring mind that are essential to the makeup of a scientist. He delivers many wry observations on how to choose a research topic, how to get along wih collabourators and older scientists and administrators, how (and how not) to present a scientific…
I love this book because Dan combines his passion for immunology with his own voice. It inspired me to write my own book.
Dan’s boundless enthusiasm for his field explodes off the page, breathing life into what could have been a dry topic. I learnt a huge amount about both writing and immunology.
The Compatibility Gene takes readers on a global journey of discovery spanning 60 years, involving scores of scientists, and encompassing the history of transplants and immunology. That journey has revealed astonishing links between who we are as individuals and our never-ceasing struggle to survive disease.
Most of the 25,000 genes we possess are the same for all of us. Compatibility genes are those that vary most from person to person and give each of us a unique molecular signature. These genes determine both the extent to which we are susceptible to a vast range of illnesses and the different ways…
This book inspired me to write. I love the way Jahren puts herself in the centre of the narrative linking the science and the scientist.
Whilst there are differences between how plants and humans respond to infections–pathogens are important for both. Thinking about cross-cutting principles across different disciplines often opens up new ideas.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER •NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Geobiologist Hope Jahren has spent her life studying trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Lab Girl is her revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also a celebration of the lifelong curiosity, humility, and passion that drive every scientist.
"Does for botany what Oliver Sacks’s essays did for neurology, what Stephen Jay Gould’s writings did for paleontology.” —The New York Times
In these pages, Hope takes us back to her Minnesota childhood, where she spent hours in unfettered play in her father’s college laboratory. She tells us how she found a sanctuary…
Nature wants you dead; it wants you to cough, sneeze, and poop yourself into an early grave. But thanks to your immune system (and innovations made by scientists), you are alive to read about why you are alive! Human life expectancy has nearly doubled in the last 100 years thanks to advances in our understanding of infectious diseases.
In my book (written in the dark days of the first COVID lockdown), I explore the history of infectious disease, all the incredible researchers who helped us understand pathogens, and how the body responds to them. I then celebrate the remarkable leaps forward made in protecting us from infectious diseases and treating us if we do get infected.
Riley Masterson has moved to Greenbrier, SC, anxious to escape the chaos that has overwhelmed her life.
Questioned in a murder in Alabama, she has spent eighteen months under suspicion by a sheriff’s office, unable to make an arrest. But things in gentrifying Greenbrier are not as they seem. As Riley struggles to forge a new life, forces are gathering in the tension-plagued neighborhood where glitzy new homes rise alongside crumbling mill houses, and everyone, it seems, can peer into a neighbor’s window.
When murder explodes, someone unexpected is caught in the crossfire. Detectives are left to ponder: Are the…
After being questioned in a murder investigation, Riley Masterson has spent eighteen months under suspicion by the sheriff’s office. Anxious to escape accusing eyes, she finally decides to leave Alabama and move to South Carolina.
But Greenbrier isn’t the stabilizing influence she hopes for, as her neighborhood is slowly being gentrified, with homeless people living in the shadows of mansions. As Riley struggles to forge a new life, forces are gathering in the tension-plagued neighborhood as glitzy new homes rise beside crumbling mill houses, and everyone is able and willing to peer into a neighbor’s window.
