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Yellow Fever, Black Goddess: The Coevolution Of People And Plagues (Helix Book) Paperback – August 29, 1997

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Christopher Wills (Author)
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Christopher Wills (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars 9 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Series: Helix Book
  • Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Basic Books (August 29, 1997)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0201328186
  • ISBN-13: 978-0201328189
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,385,459 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsHighly Readable Discussion of Modern Epidemic Diseases
By jps00@ibm.net on November 11, 1997
Format: Paperback
Yellow Fever, Black Goddess is interesting and anecdotal. Its highly readable by someone with only the fundamentals of parasitology and epidemiology interested in modern day epidemics.
Wills takes the reader through a survey of the world's primary epidemic diseases explaining their origin, morphology, the history of their study and cure. In addition, he addresses some Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) such as syphilis and AIDS. A major thesis is the constant war of adoption taking place genetically between parasites, disease organisms and human beings. At a macro-level, humanity is changing its environment in the name of progress and to eliminate and control diseases. At the micro-level, parasites and diseases are rapidly mutating themselves to find new hosts in this new environment. On occasion, the resulting mutation is lethal to the host and becomes an epidemic (the modern term for plague).
Wills style is highly readable including several personal stories to illustrate his points. Reading this book does require at least undergraduate knowledge of biology and genetics. However, the author clearly explains the more complex aspects of the subject. The discussion on cholera is particularly interesting and well done.
Wills book does suffer from a lack of coordination and the discussion is uneven. The major sections address the individual diseases and parasites well. However, they are not well organized together as a whole. I imagine there is a connection in the discussion between viral, bacterial, and multicellular parasite contagion, but I failed to fully see the progression. For example, while titillating, I failed to see the connection between syphilis and malaria. Some subject diseases are better covered then others.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsRead this book
By Bruce A. Werness on February 5, 2000
Format: Paperback
Wills does not provide an exhaustive review of diseases, but selects illustrative examples. I find this preferable to a less in-depth discussion of a large number of diseases. His incorporation of personal experiences, and theoretical speculations on disease and diversity add breadth and depth to this book. I thought it was excellent.
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3.0 out of 5 starsStilted prose
By Frank on October 1, 1998
Format: Paperback
While the subject of the book is fascinating, and there is some interesting information in the book, the book would greatly benefit from substantial editing, with emphasis on writing style.
The book suffers from a number of writing faults. If it's a book about "the coevolution of people and plagues" (its subtitle), why are the author's world travels constantly thrown at the reader? "One of my most searing memories is of being surrounded on a street in Hyderabad by a crowd of lepers.... I reached Vellore, a cheerful and relatively clean market town, after a hectic 120-kilometre bus ride from Madras...."
If the reader makes it past the travelogue, the reader will still have to get through the prose and commas. "Yet the AIDS virus, despite its fearsome aspects, has had just as much difficulty in spreading through the human population as syphilis or typhoid, and has had to make equally dramatic compromises in order to retain its ability to spread" is a typical sentence.
The subject would be much better served if the author could stay on topic and the book was presented as an adventure to be discovered and enjoyed instead of making each sentence (and the book itself) a puzzle to be penetrated.
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5.0 out of 5 starsTerrific book
By Bennett E. Werner on May 24, 2012
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
I read this book about 5 years ago so I'm not sure how/why Amazon offered it to me to review at this time. I'm a physician but I learned a lot from this book - can't recall all the specifics but I'm sure some of the information has been incorporated into my "database". It's very well written and easy to read. Highly recommended.
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2.0 out of 5 starsA singularly dull read
By A Customer on December 17, 2000
Format: Paperback
_Yellow Fever, Black Goddess: The Coevolution of People and Plagues_ could have been a penetrating examination of the relationship between humanity and disease. Christopher Willis certainly had fertile ground to work, but the book ends up being a dull and pedantic trudge that fails to bring the best of the academic or the popular to the reader.
The text wanders through evolutionary biology and human history without any real sense of direction. The biographies and personal histories read like indifferent `human interest' stories injected into an otherwise uninteresting science news broadcast.
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