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The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance Reprint Edition

by Laurie Garrett (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars 168 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0140250916
ISBN-10: 0140250913
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 768 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (October 1, 1995)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0140250913
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140250916
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.6 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (168 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #55,053 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsMicrobes are no fun!
By Chad Bagley on May 18, 2000
Format: Paperback
I read this book two years ago and thought it was a great read. I just finished reading it again and have to say that I liked it even more the second time around. I should warn you however, that if you're looking for lighthearted summer reading that'll lull you into complacency and make you feel all warm and fuzzy about the world- stick to Oprah's book list. The only warm fuzzies you'll find in this very informative and well-written book are the microbes and viruses that make up the subject matter.
Laurie Garrett has done a masterful job of chronicling the spread of infectious diseases over the last 50 years. The book is divided into sections that give the history of the rise (and in one or two cases- the fall) of the major pandemics of this century. The chapter on AIDS is worth the price of the book alone and should be required reading for political science students. It's the perfect case study on how apathy, intolerance, ignorance and political infighting foster the spread of infectious diseases.
The underlying message of The Coming Plague is that we are at war with oodles and oodles of really small things whose survival instincts are much better than ours. In short- we're losing! These pernicious little buggers seem to be able to adapt much quicker than we can find new ways to kill them.
The Coming Plague reads like a detective story. And Garrett does a fine job of making it human and personal by giving us a peek into the lives of the scientists who are heading up the fight to solve the mysteries -and the victims who suffer from them.
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5.0 out of 5 starsCritically Important Book On Emerging Public Health Issues
By Barron Laycock HALL OF FAME on June 12, 2000
Format: Library Binding
With recent news blurbs concerning the possible threat from strains of the West Nile virus in the northeastern part of the country this summer, the urgent importance of this book is quietly being reinforced. This important effort by journalist Laurie Garrett is a whopper; a long, carefully documented and quite readable text giving an overview of the worldwide efforts of the "insect fighters' at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) of the U.S. Public Health Service and other agencies ranging from the U.N to state, university and local agencies to combat a panoply of both new biological agents like HIV, Ebola, and the West Nile virus as well as new and much more virulent and drug-resistant strains of old enemies like tuberculosis, bubonic plague, a number of venereal diseases, and complex new public health concerns like Toxic Shock Syndrome.
Ms Garrett's highly detailed and exhaustively documented thesis, written while on a graduate fellowship at Harvard, is both frightening and hard to ignore. She posits that through our environmental arrogance and stupidity, the general medical strategies of the western societies, and our consistent overuse of antibiotics, we are quickly losing the continuing fight to keep the general public of both the postindustrial nations and the less developed world safe from the wild panoply of microbiological agents that are out there in the environment, and we are, through our encroachment on wilderness areas never before populated by humans, unnecessarily introducing segments of the population to new microbiological agents who then find a vector or path into human habitation and resultant infection.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsAdvantage: Microbe
By ealovitt HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWER on February 10, 2001
Format: Paperback
"The Coming Plague" is 620 pages of densely-packed text on humanity's war against its deadliest enemies. Throughout the twentieth century and into the new millenium, we've given our microscopic enemies glorious new opportunities to exploit us, whether it be through war, slash-and-burn agriculture, or stagnant water in an air-conditioning system. Laurie Garrett has written a fascinating and frightening account of some of the battles we almost won (measles and polio) and some where we appear to be in full retreat (AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis). Her book is especially compulsive reading when she describes the individual skirmishes in the war, e.g. a journey into the African bush to identify and treat a disease that was killing 80% of its victims, or the discovery that cholera vibrio could live inside of algae and didn't require person-to-person transmission.
Even if you live in the middle of the Canadian tundra and have sworn off eating mollusks for the rest of your life, this book hammers home the fact that you're still not safe from what used to be called 'Third World diseases'. Even as I write this review, there is a woman in an isolation chamber of a hospital in Hampton, Ontario who is gravely ill with an unknown hemorrhagic fever. The doctors don't think its Ebola Fever, but they're not sure what it is, or whether any of the other passengers on the plane from Nigeria to Canada could also have been infected.
You can conclude (as I did) from "The Coming Plague" that many of us who expected to die from age-related conditions such as heart failure or cancer, may now well perish from infection. This book manages to combine the heroics of "Men against Death", the grim prophecy of "Silent Spring", and descriptions of several hair-raising, near-tragedies akin to the "Hot Zone". I highly recommend it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Gripping facts on diseases and their history.

Published 4 days ago by Margaret Cobb
5.0 out of 5 starsWill keep you up all night

This is a little long, but very absorbing. I really enjoyed the thorough historical details on this subject. I was absorbed and fascinated by it.

Published 3 months ago by Minnita
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

This is a wonderful read.

Published 5 months ago by Maria
5.0 out of 5 starsOne of my all-time favorites- incredibly awesome! Read this book!

The Coming Plague, written in 1995, is perhaps more timely than ever. It is a long book, but each chapter is a different outbreak the CDC handled or mishandled over the decades. Read more

Published 6 months ago by Justin Reilly, JD
5.0 out of 5 starsAnother excellent read for anyone with just a smidge of a ...

Another excellent read for anyone with just a smidge of a medical background. Laurie Garrett tells a good story here.

Published 8 months ago by Mollie hayes
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Spellbinding ...

Published 8 months ago by Alfred Carlomagno
4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

Right on time and it looks good

Published 8 months ago by Emmie
5.0 out of 5 starsNot light reading!

Read this book when it first came out. Loved it so I read it again 20 years later. Still loved it. There is a lot of medical and scientific information, some of which was over my... Read more

Published 8 months ago by Chloene Backus
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

I love it

Published 12 months ago by Alice and Fred Ottoboni
5.0 out of 5 starsWhile probably out dated it presents a picture of viral diseases that...

This book is frightening its statistics and diseases. While probably out dated it presents a picture of viral diseases that is amazing.

Published 12 months ago by Mary Shultz

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