On Pandemics: Deadly Diseases from Bubonic Plague to Coronavirus
Written by David Waltner-Toews
Narrated by David Godfrey
4.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Authored by a leading epidemiologist, this engrossing book answers our questions about animal diseases that jump to humans—called zoonoses—including what attracts them to humans, why they have become more common in recent history, and how we can keep them at bay.
Almost all pandemics and epidemics have been caused by diseases that come to us from animals, including SARS, Ebola, and—now—Covid-19. Epidemiologist, veterinarian, and ecosystem health specialist, David Waltner-Toews, gathers the latest research to profile dozens of illnesses in On Pandemics. Chapters are broken into short, dynamic explainers, each one tackling a different disease. Readers will discover:
- Why zoonotic diseases jump from animals to humans—and why some decide to stick around for good.
- How governments have responded to pandemics and epidemics throughout history, for better or for worse.
- The role of climate change, industrialized farming, cultural practices, biodiversity loss, and globalization in making these diseases not only possible, but inevitable outcomes of our modern lifestyles.
Coronaviruses, such as those that cause SARS and Covid-19, have made bats their home for centuries. Until SARS came along, we didn’t know they were there, nor do we know how many other death-dealing viruses might be living undetected in wildlife. On Pandemics shows the greater impact of animal-borne diseases on our world, and encourages us to re-examine our role in pandemics, if not for our own health, then for the health of our planet.
Published originally in 2007 as The Chickens Fight Back: Pandemic Panics and Deadly Diseases that Jump from Animals to Humans, this book has been updated in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
David Waltner-Toews
David Waltner-Toews is an internationally celebrated veterinary epidemiologist, eco-health, and One Health specialist. He has published more than 20 books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry
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Reviews for On Pandemics
7 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I thought the book was well-written and certainly timely given that it was updated during the covid-19 pandemic. The narrator has a great vocal quality but unfortunately he has a problem with rampant mispronunciation of words that are basic to the subject of the book. Not only that, many of these words are pronounced in more than one way throughout the book. For instance, his four distinct pronunciations of the word spirochete and his two different pronunciations of the word presage. These egregious mispronunciations made listening to the book difficult. The problem with mispronunciation could have been solved by either the narrator checking pronunciation on words he was not comfortable with or the director having him reread those portions.
Here's an incomplete list:
Subsistence
presage (two pronunciations)
spirochete (four pronunciations)
Gabon
demonstrable
Advantageous
phylum
Profligacy
Vagaries
Sojourn
Brutical (?)
Scheherazade
Albert Camus
Misanthropic