Why am I passionate about this?
As a journalist and an author, I’ve been covering the subject of scary viruses for twenty years—ever since I walked through Ebola habitat in a forest in northeastern Gabon, on assignment for National Geographic. I’ve interviewed many of the eminent experts—from Peter Piot to Marion Koopmans to Tony Fauci—and have spent field time with some of the intrepid younger disease ecologists who look for viruses in bat guano in Chinese caves and in gorilla blood in Central African forests. My book Spillover, published in 2012, drew much of that research together in describing the history and evolutionary ecology of animal infections that spill into humans.
David's book list on rigorously scientific scary viruses
Why did David love this book?
Charlie Calisher is a veteran in the field of killer viruses transmitted by mosquitoes and other arthropods, retired now after decades of dangerous work for the CDC, in collaboration with the WHO, and at Colorado State University. He’s also a sly, plainspoken curmudgeon with a golden heart, a piquant sense of humor, and a wonderfully easy way of telling the stories of science in a conversational tone. The fact that he has honored me with his friendship, and been an invaluable counsel to me and to others on the subject of viruses, biases my high opinion of this book practically not at all.
1 author picked Lifting the Impenetrable Veil as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
History books can be boring to read but Dr. Charles Calisher has written a history of the early days of virus research that is anything but boring. His book emphasizes viruses, organization, and people, the combination which has led us to today. Using yellow fever and the virus that causes it, yellow fever virus, as an example of a disease caused by a virus transmitted by insects, Calisher takes us through the days when knowledge of these diseases was in short supply, techniques were primitive, but researchers were brilliant, innovative, and hard-working. From Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, to Walter…