Microbes

May 4, 2020
Infectious disease specialist Peterson (Get Inside Your Doctor’s Head) provides a fascinating overview of germs in his educational and timely primer. Peterson begins by explaining how germs, despite the threat they pose to other living things by causing disease, appear at the “very root” of the “Tree of Life,” as the predecessor to multicellular organisms. Peterson then surveys epidemics over the course of human history, such as smallpox or the bubonic plague, and those of the modern world; in the early 1990s, he notes, medical professionals were experiencing an “onslaught of new or reemerging infectious diseases.” He covers more than 20 in all, notably including killer viruses such as HIV and Ebola (though not the virus that causes Covid-19). In a final section looking to the future, he cautions that “we still have a very long way to go” in vaccine development. But though the “nature of many germs remains profoundly mysterious,” he stresses that there are many scientists committed to solving these mysteries. Lay readers should find this an eye-opening and illuminating look at the pressing issue of infectious disease. Agent: Jessica Kastner.