![]() ![]() On closer inspection, the book has substance, features a well-developed argument, and draws heavily on the historical record over about fifty years, starting in 1950 or so, and occasionally on earlier historical examples. At 750 pages in length, it makes for difficult reading on an airplane or on holiday at the beach, and the topic-emerging infectious disease in a world undergoing ecological upheaval-is not exactly escapist fare. Yet this is hardly your typical popular book. A quick glance at the book is enough to tell you that it is not even a standard academic work: from the sensationalist title, to the jacket design, to the lurid description and reader blurbs on the back-featuring words like “shocking,” “scary,” and “frightening”-it appears to be designed to attract attention, mostly from a general audience. 1 There is little in the way of engagement with secondary sources or deep archival research, and it does not display the kind of subtle or nuanced thinking we are accustomed to in exacting historical scholarship. ![]() Laurie Garrett’s The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance isn’t a standard work of history. The problem is serious, and it is getting worse. ![]()
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