By David Quammen
W.W. Norton & Company, October 2012
“The Next Big One” (NBO), in David Quammen’s parlance, is the heir apparent to the Black Death, smallpox, Spanish flu, polio, and AIDS: the next dread disease to scythe at least a seven-figure swath through humanity. Like AIDS, it’s apt to be a zoonosis—a viral or bacterial disease that “spills over” from an animal “reservoir host” to humans, perhaps after expansion in another animal “amplifier host.” The premise of Quammen’s frightening, engrossing new book, researched in Australia, Africa, China, and beyond over more than a decade, is that the NBO is not a matter of if, but when.
A master of making complex science unintimidating without dumbing it down, Quammen lays out the basics of zoonotic ecology and epidemiology with spellbinding clarity. Then, towing the reader along through Congolese jungles, South Chinese bat caves, and Dutch goat dairies, he layers on ...
