Most Helpful Customer Reviews
54 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointingly shallow, March 27, 2011
I loved "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and was looking forward to another exciting book on the impact of disease on history. Unfortunately, this is not it. There are some great stories in this book, but overall it reads like a series of undergraduate lectures delivered with minimal fact-checking to an uncritical audience. In a book intended for non-scientists, it's appropriate to omit citations within the text, but no sources are listed anywhere, even for whole chapters and the most controversial claims. As teachers, we plead with students not to take claims at face value, but to look at the evidence. Books are listed at the end for "further reading," but no research articles. There's not much 21st century updating- surely the lovely stories about Helicobacter and language co-evolution and the scary ones about XDR-TB belong here. Prof. Clark knows his microbiology, but is incurious about human genetics, anthropology, and HIV epidemiology, to name just three fields central to his speculations. We are told (p. 15) that the sickle cell mutation is found "only in Africans indigenous to regions harboring P. falciparum malaria". This is just not true. The same mutation is found at relatively high frequencies in Greek, Saudi Arabian, East Indian, and other populations exposed to falciparum malaria; it has evolved independently at least five times. He speculates that differences in sexual permissiveness account for Christian vs Muslim differences in HIV prevalence rates in subSaharan Africa. For several years it's been known that circumcision is highly protective and explains most of these differences. "in Africa...AIDS will thin out the promiscuous and malnourished, and favor the spread of religious puritanism, particularly Islamic sects..." (p. 253). The book is full of this kind of disdainful and eugenic language. Dr Clark has his curmudgeonly peeves, which recur throughout; these include "political correctness," the "anti-smoking lobby", "homosexuals," working women (sloppy housekeepers, they expose their families to Salmonella), and the idea of human-caused global warming. (On p. 245, climate change is described as a natural long-term fluctuation). Did you know that automobile pollution kills germs? Really? Could be- but you will look in vain for a citation to this non-obvious factoid. The book's language is downright quaint. Not since the 1960's have scientists used terms like "savages," "primitive tribes", and "promiscuous." These have not been abandoned because of "political correctness," but because they are scientifically meaningless.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
39 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Basic Overview of Epidemics & Civilization, August 10, 2010
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
A very generalized account of the history of epidemics and how they have changed civilization. Also, how these epidemics evolve and how we evolve resistance to them. Everything from malaria, Black Death, Mad Cow, Typhus, etc..
This is a very easy read with short chapters. I read where some reviewers criticize this book because of its lack of footnotes or supportive material. On this point I would agree, it is most definitely lacking in these areas. Though it may be accurate historically, it is rather hard to check up on the author's remarks.
That being said, I still found it generally informative even if it is somewhat speculative.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A pox on all our houses, August 19, 2010
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Mr. Clark has written a book that discusses basic disease transmission and the results thereof in a way for the layperson to understand. He goes over the plagues that hit ancient Rome, Greece, Persia, etc. The belief in many religions that disease came from sin or evil spirits (or both) is also expounded upon in short, easy-to-read subsections in the chapter. There is also some scrying going on at the end, where Mr. Clark attempts to divine what sorts of diseases may be born from technology and future populations.
The strengths of the book are its accessibility for someone who may be a history buff but not much of an epidemiologist, and it certainly has interesting facts aobut how diseases wax and wane as microscopic critters make their way through us, leaving trails of death, disfigurement, and stronger immune systems.
The weakness of the book would be some of the writing. The author repeats himself often, sometimes only changing one word in a similar sentence on a nearby page. The repetition should have been done away with by an editor who knows better. The book could easily be 1/3 shorter than it is if the repetitions were taken out.
I've never written a book, and I do not have the sort of big brain that would allow me to become a professor of microbiology at a university, so I hate to nitpick someone else's work, but I wish the editor had done a better job here and I also wish there were footntotes so we could see where the information is coming from.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
