21 June,2020 08:15 AM IST | | Jane Borges
Mumbai is no stranger to epidemics; and, if one had to go back 124 years, the island city was grappling with something equally sinister: The Bubonic Plague of 1896. JK Condon's book discusses the progress of the plague in the Bombay Presidency. The 400-page book, which is a go-to resource for many historians, might not be an easy read, and may sound text-bookish.
To read: https://digital.nls.uk/indiapapers/browse/archive/74465581
Award-winning American science journalist Sonia Shah merges history, reportage, and personal narrative to document the origin of epidemics in this 2017 book. Shah uses the cholera outbreak, which emerged in 1817 in South Asian hinterlands before rapidly dispersing across the world, as an example to understand the "dramatic journey from harmless microbe to a world-changing pandemic."
Price: Rs 1,340;
To buy: amazon.in
This book is a great introduction to virology. While the word "virus" is now beginning to generate a great sense of alarm and fear, Roossinck through her illustrated guide of 101 microbes - each with a colour illustration - explains why some viruses are actually good for us, and why others are not. Her book serves as an interesting primer "on the history of this science, how viruses are named, how their genes work, how they copy and package themselves, how they interact with their hosts, how immune systems counteract viruses, and how viruses travel from host to host." It takes you back to the drawing board, to understand the biology of these fascinating microbes.
Price: Rs 1,653;
To buy: amazon.in
Spillover, as science writer David Quammen explains, is the term used by disease ecologists to "denote the moment when a pathogen passes from members of one species, as host, into members of another." When Quammen wrote this book in 2012, he was quoted on his website, saying: "The next big and murderous human pandemic... will be caused by a new disease - new to humans, anyway. The bug that's responsible will be strange, unfamiliar, but it won't come from outer space. Odds are that the killer pathogen - most likely a virus - will spill over into humans from a nonhuman animal." Eight years on, the world is experiencing a story, not very different from what he predicted. In an interview, to Steve Mirsky in the Science American, Quammen shared that his book "...takes the reader and writer back to the Darwinian truth - that we humans are kind of animals."
Price: Rs 3,350;
To buy: amazon.in
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