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

Laurie Garrett

Oct 1994 · Sold by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About this ebook

A New York Times bestseller

The definitive account of the infectious diseases threatening humanity by Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Laurie Garrett

"Prodigiously researched . . . A frightening vision of the future and a deeply unsettling one." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

After decades spent assuming that the conquest of infectious disease was imminent, people on all continents now find themselves besieged by AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, cholera that defies chlorine water treatment, and exotic viruses that can kill in a matter of hours.

Relying on extensive interviews with leading experts in virology, molecular biology, disease ecology, and medicine, as well as field research in sub-Saharan Africa, Western Europe, Central America, and the United States, Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague takes readers from the savannas of eastern Bolivia to the rain forests of the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo on a harrowing, fifty year journey through the history of our battles with microbes. This book is a work of investigative reportage like no other and a wake-up call to a world that has become complacent in the face of infectious disease—one that offers a sobering and prescient warning about the dangers of ignoring the coming plague.

Ratings and reviews

This book provided a clear understanding of how virus mutations will inevitably overcome our ability to keep up with the main cast of bad guy virus "families" such as flu, dengue, hanta etc. as population on this planet inevitably reaches the earth's carrying capacity. Ms Garrett definitely has the talent to convey the complex world of epidemiology to the layman. You'll understand the challenges we face in a world where one infected person on one airplane could any mutated virus throughout the globe in literally hours through the airplanes ventilation systems and traffic hubs and that viruses are for millions years continue to be nature's way of dealing with any animal who overpopulates her kingdom.

Remarkable book, but in need of a new edition, especially now with Ebola a problem. Still worth a read. Bb

One of all time favourite books. I still reread it to this day 10 years later!

About the author

Laurie Garrett is a science contributor for NBC News and MSNBC and a former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1996 for a series of works published in Newsday, and has also been awarded the Polk and Peabody Prizes. She is the author of The Coming Plague, Betrayal of Trust, and Ebola: Story of an Outbreak.