This book is extremely interesting and informative. As a child, I have always wondered about how diseases and viruses are spread so easily. After reading this book, I feel as if all the questions that I had asked as a child has been answered.Even though this book is extremely informative, it can also be extremely scary at times. For example, it made me feel that potentially lethal diseases are everywhere and could kill anyone at any time.All in all, I would recommend this book to all who are interested. I would call this book a zoonotic companion to The Coming Plague. Quammen embarks on an incredibly ambitious effort in this book and I would say he does an excellent job. His science writing is easy to understand and he doesn't shy away from difficult concepts. His ebola chapter, considering the current outbreak, was quite sobering. In my opinion this book is a must for public health students. This book is supposed to be readable to a general audience. This means Quammen did a lot of expository and descriptive writing on his locations. This was a bit too much for my liking. It read slightly like a travel guide. The chapter on AIDS has several sections which are entirely fictional musings that I found very annoying. Again, I don't think this is a bad thing necessarily for all readers but for me it was. Despite this drawback I do encourage people to check out this book. Quammen really sticks the landing in the conclusion although there's a touch of drama. A lot of science writers can go off the rails in their conclusions (including Garret) but this one was good.
This is a great book to read if you want to be terrified of everything in the world.
—SaimaZaman14
Very accessible for non-science people, lots of fascinating stuff about zoonoses.
—toni
Loved every page, scary like hell. When the next big one has yet to come?
—tubbs
Meh - get's draggy at times.
—sokzgrejfruta
A salubrious experience.
—jenna
