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| The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years |  | Author: Sonia Shah
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy New: $15.17
as of 9/8/2010 04:15 CDT details
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Seller: pbshop
Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 3,964
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 10 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0374230013
Dewey Decimal Number: 614.532
EAN: 9780374230012
ASIN: 0374230013
Publication Date: July 6, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause célèbre for voguish philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono, and Laura Bush are only a few of the personalities who have lent their names—and opened their pocketbooks—in hopes of curing the disease. Still, in a time when every emergent disease inspires waves of panic, why aren’t we doing more to eradicate one of our oldest foes? And how does a parasitic disease that we’ve known how to prevent for more than a century still infect 500 million people every year, killing nearly 1 million of them?
In The Fever, the journalist Sonia Shah sets out to answer these questions, delivering a timely, inquisitive chronicle of the illness and its influence on human lives. Through the centuries, she finds, we’ve invested our hopes in a panoply of drugs and technologies, and invariably those hopes have been dashed. From the settling of the New World to the construction of the Panama Canal, through wars and the advances of the Industrial Revolution, Shah tracks malaria’s jagged ascent and the tragedies in its wake, revealing a parasite every bit as persistent as the insects that carry it. With distinguished prose and original reporting from Panama, Malawi, Cameroon, India, and elsewhere, The Fever captures the curiously fascinating, devastating history of this long-standing thorn in the side of humanity.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
 A brilliant synthesis of a complicated subject July 20, 2010
E. Jacobs
21 out of 22 found this review helpful
Malaria is not something most of us think about in-depth unless traveling to an area where the disease is common. However, this incredible book makes an excellent argument for why we should. The author manages to magically transform volumes of scientific information into a riveting tale that just about anyone will enjoy.
Ms. Shah traces the very complex history of malaria from the beginning of human/mosquito interaction, and covers a range of related topics including the routes of infection and transmission; why certain areas and populations are more susceptible to malaria; the role of war, technology, and industry in sparking the disease; and why the efforts to control or at least contain it have not been universally successful. The book is meticulously sourced (at least 30% of the text consists of the references listed at the end of the book and footnoted within each chapter), but is not dry in the least.
The book reads like fiction, and it's too bad that it's not. The author leaves the reader with a very well-developed sense that the merest change in environmental conditions can leave us all susceptible to the next wave of malaria. I recommend this book strongly to just about anyone, but particularly for those who are interested in medical history and public health.
A Wake Up Call to Americans About the Dangers of Malarial Infection July 21, 2010
Frederick S. Goethel (Central Valley, CA)
13 out of 16 found this review helpful
The author begins the book with a look at how malaria developed and how the transmission cycle occurs in the Anopheles mosquito. Tracing it roots in Africa thousands of years ago, the author follows malarias spread around the world and explains why it is endemic in some areas while rarely found in others. She also delves into the issues of eradication and why it has failed to control, let alone conquer, the spread of the disease. From spraying to medications to netting, the author details why each has failed and how the malarial parasite has managed to survive most attempts to control it.
Most Americans rarely, if ever, think about malaria, and if they do, they think about it as it relates to poor African and South American countries which have not been able to eradicate malaria. I doubt many Americans are aware that we are precariously close to having malaria return to this country. Most mosquito experts will admit that we are potentially one infected person away from having malaria return to this country, and with globalization and easy travel available, it is inevitable that we will develop pockets of malaria. It really is just a matter of time.
The book is very well written, translating difficult technical information into very readable material that does not require scientific training to understand. As a board member of a mosquito control district, I am quite aware of how difficult it is to transmit readable, understandable information to the public, and the author has done an amazing job of doing just that. It should act as a wake up call to Americans about the dangers of malaria and why we need to be vigilant. I would recommend it to all, specifically those people living in areas where malaria is most likely to return.
Top notch research and writing August 8, 2010
Ada A
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Malaria has been a debilitating scourge of humanity for at least half a million years. In many parts of the world, not solely in the tropics, the disease ravages populations predictably, killing some, leaving the rest listless and incapable of significant occupation, either work or play.
Shah's documentary text reads like a detective story as humankind conjectures about and then discovers definitively that mosquitoes, immune themselves to the effects of the disease, spread the malaria parasite to other creatures, humans especially.
Fascinating in implication, Shah shows how human hubris, ignorance, superstition, intolerance and greed have played a part in this life-or-death engagement. She details the disease vector's adaptability, resilience, and sheer numbers as well as its necessity within the grand natural scheme of things.
Shah explores the success of modern technology including the development of powerful synthetic chemicals to contain and control malaria's spread. The use of treated mosquito nets is seen as, perhaps, "the best modern hope." But free distribution isn't enough by itself. Education about the why and how of using the nets is essential. And even at that, the measure may only be a temporary stopgap.
Read thoughtfully, reflect, then act --- many sources are supplied to spur even the most desultory reader to action.
A Greek Tragedy Featuring Bloodsucking/Parasites Played On a Global Stage August 25, 2010
R. A. Barricklow (Las Vegas NV USA)
The tragedy is of course the millions of children that have fallen prey to this deadly parasite. A tragedy that has played out across the globe and has been on the stage with mankind since he/she emerged as homo sapiens. A tragedy, in that half of all human deaths since the stone age have been attributed to malaria.
The author wisely makes the connection between what the ancient Greeks called, "Knowing that"(theoretical knowledge) & "Knowing how"(practical knowlege), which she then passes onto the reader.
When you have turned the last page you will find there is another kind of bloodsucker/parasite present in the form of the globalized, privitized, for-profit blood money genus.
The author does not quantify them as the major obstacle in the continuous battle over this amazing "shape shifter" of a parasite. Indeed, she identifies this major hurtle as "a cultural challenge". It is the endemic poor, across the globe that provide the blood reservoir for the parasite. It will therefore, because of the cultural aspects, take a grass-roots-up approach to have the desired effects. Thus, to both eradicate the poverty & malaria, in a one/two simultaneous knock-out punch, it will take a public/health & public/finance dance with deadly malaria/privitized central bank. The bank can be done with simply forming a public bank within the community(read: Web of Debt by Ellen Brown on how it's done). The infrastructure should then be based upon medical: structures, personal, supplies, roads, etc. This then, with the locally-owned community bank(intially infused with donations with the goal of self perpetuating/exponential growth) would breath local currency into the community bank(with exchange capabilities), AND then breath it BACK INTO THE COMMUNITY, ever breathing in & out capital while sustaining growth locally. Eventually, through the sands of time, the bloodsucker/parasites would be colored gone.
In the expansion's wake would be the ghosts of the shapeshifters & the moneylenders. In their stead, would be many, many children at play in a land, now full of promise & future - for theirs & their children to come.
For me, probably the most fascinating part was about the very beginnings of the parasite. Plasmodium did not start out a killer hardwired to steal. It's ancestor contains vestiges of the machinery of photosynthesis! We know this from it's DNA which still retains approximately 10 percent of these proteins.
Extrememly entertaining in the history that encompasses both mankind & the parasite. It has shaped our settlement patterns & our histories. One in 14 people alive today have the genetic mutations in their bodies do to malaria. 300 million people will get it this year & of those, one million will die. The tragedy is that close to most will be babies & children.
Even now, the parasite is developing new hosts and finding new vectors into human beings. It is increasing its multi-drug resistences. It is evolving faster than we can manafacture or genetically engineer stop gaps.
Recently, a naturally occurring virus may serve as a "late-life-acting" insecticide by killing older adult mosquitoes for the bulk of malarias transmission. The reseachers from John Hopkins detail their research in the August 2010 issue of the Journal of Virology.
HIGHLY RECOMMENED !!!!!!!
a fascinating read! August 2, 2010
speakfriend
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Unlike the first 2 reviewers, who sound like they have a scientific or medical background, I am just a regular, ordinary person. I heard about this book from someone who had heard the author being interviewed on NPR, and it sounded like something I would like to read. I had enjoyed reading Richard Preston's books on ebola and smallpox (The Demon in the Freezer was particulary good), so I checked this out and had the sample sent to my Kindle. I could not stop reading! The book is fascinating! You do not have to have a scientific or medical background to enjoy this. The author's style is accessible, easy to read, and immediately captured my interest. I can't wait to read the full book.
The drawback? The $12.99 kindle price. I am in agreement with the boycott of books priced over $9.99, so I will wait for the price to come down, or hope to find a good used print copy. For $13 I want a print copy I can hold in my hands. It is too much to pay for a kindle book. That being said, I repeat that I found the sample fascinating, and am extremely eager to read the whole book!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
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