A well-rendered work of popular science. If you don’t emerge from it as the neighborhood expert on the flu, you skipped a...
Think the Zika virus and Ebola are bad? As a renowned epidemiologist suggests, those are just previews of coming attractions.
Long ago nicknamed “Bad News Mike” for his habit of bringing gloomy tidings from the germ front, Osterholm (Public Health/Univ. of Minnesota; co-author: Living Terrors: What America Needs to Know to Survive the Coming Bioterrorist Catastrophe, 2000) opens with the grim thought that we humans are not necessarily well-prepared to analyze the world of disease that surrounds us. For various reasons, a few cases of Zika make much more news than the far more devastating and widespread dengue virus, which has killed many more people than Zika “with hardly a blip on the public radar.” Therefore, in terms of policy, we are not being the most rational actors when we spend $1 billion on an HIV vaccine but only $35 million to $40 million on influenza vaccines; as the author predicts, the next major pandemic “is most likely to come in the form of a deadly influenza strain.” Writing in clear if sometimes-belabored prose, Osterholm, with the assistance of Olshaker, looks at some of the worst of the bad actors, showing the economic and social effects of various diseases—effects that may pale compared to his closing scenario, which sets one of those flus in motion and watches as it ravages the world, causing not just mass death, but also the collapses of infrastructure, stock markets, and pretty much civilization itself. Even so, there’s some hope in Osterholm’s musings, since, he cheerfully remarks, in such a scenario we still wouldn’t outdo the devastation of the Black Death of medieval times. Of course, there’s always the possibility that Ebola can morph into being transmitted respiratorily, a frightening prospect.
A well-rendered work of popular science. If you don’t emerge from it as the neighborhood expert on the flu, you skipped a chapter or two. If you emerge unworried, you missed the point.Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-34369-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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