Paperback: Spillover by David Quammen (Vintage, £9.99)

 
William Leith22 August 2013

In this book, one of the best pieces of science writing I’ve read for years, Quammen tells us about how diseases spread from animals to humans. He makes you think about the mathematics of an epidemic. He’s particularly good on the spread of the Aids virus — from a chimpanzee in Central Africa to a hunter who cut himself while butchering the meat, down the river to Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo, to Haitian workers, to a company in Haiti selling blood plasma, and then to America. The detective work is brilliant, and stunning to read. He gets it, every step of the way, and explains it beautifully.

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