"The "Indiana Jones" of virus hunters reveals the complex interactions between humans and viruses, and the threat from viruses that jump from species to species"-- Provided by publisher.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The disease that stunted the growth of tobacco plants was first discovered by a microbiologist named Martinus Beijerinck. He believed that a new form of life must be the cause, and he named it the virus. #2 I teach a seminar at Stanford called Viral Lifestyles. The title was meant to evoke curiosity among prospective students, but also describe one of the course’s objectives: to learn to envision the world from the perspective of a virus. #3 Viruses are the smallest known microbes. They are dependent on the cells they infect to survive, and they must infect cell-based life forms in order to do so. They are also the most diverse forms of life. #4 The majority of life on Earth is microscopic. Seen and unseen life, which includes bacteria, archaea, and viruses, makes up a much larger percentage of the planet’s biomass than the more recognizable cellular life forms, the eukaryotes.

The Third Edition of best-selling Understanding Viruses provides a strong, comprehensive introduction to human viral diseases. It provides a balanced approach to virology, combining the molecular, clinical, and historical aspects, making it the ideal text for undergraduate students majoring in biology, microbiology, medical technology, or pre-med.

Analyses the current wave of depression, or "desertion", that is causing more and more people to abandon hope and desire in a world where social, political and environment collapse seems inevitable. Depression is rife amongst young people the world over. But what if this isn’t depression as we know it, but instead a reaction to the chaos and collapse of a seemingly unchangeable and unliveable future? In Quit Everything, Franco Berardi argues that this “depression” is actually conscious or unconscious withdrawal of psychological energy and a dis-investment of desire that he defines instead as “desertion”. A desertion from political participation, from the daily grind of capitalism, from the brutal reality of climate collapse, and from a society which offers nothing but chaos and pain. Berardi analyses why this desertion is on the rise and why more people are quitting everything in our age of political impotence and the rise of the far-right, asking if we can find some political hope in desertion amongst the ruins of a world on the brink of collapse.

The 1918 influenza pandemic. The Polio scourge. The AIDS epidemic. The Ebola and Zika outbreaks. Modern history has seen numerous deadly viruses and pandemics that have harmed or killed hundreds of millions of people. And the history is ongoing. The world is facing antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” and infectious diseases tied to climate change, and our previously reliable medicines and treatments no longer always work. What causes these outbreaks, how they spread, and how best to contain and combat them are often open to debate. The most informed opinions from the most respected doctors, researchers, and public health officials are found here, presenting various perspectives on our current and future health and offering both cause for hope and reason to fear.

The first history of epidemics in modern Asia. Robert Peckham considers the varieties of responses that epidemics have elicited - from India to China and the Russian Far East - and examines the processes that have helped to produce and diffuse disease across the region.

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize | A New York Times Editor's Choice “[A] grounded, bracingly intelligent study” —Nature Prizewinning science journalist Sonia Shah presents a startling examination of the pandemics that have ravaged humanity—and shows us how history can prepare us to confront the most serious acute global health emergency of our time. Over the past fifty years, more than three hundred infectious diseases have either emerged or reemerged, appearing in places where they’ve never before been seen. Years before the sudden arrival of COVID-19, ninety percent of epidemiologists predicted that one of them would cause a deadly pandemic sometime in the next two generations. It might be Ebola, avian flu, a drug-resistant superbug, or something completely new, like the novel virus the world is confronting today. While it was impossible to predict the emergence of SARS-CoV-2—and it remains impossible to predict which pathogen will cause the next global outbreak—by unraveling the stories of pandemics past we can begin to better understand our own future, and to prepare for what it holds in store. In Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond, Sonia Shah interweaves history, original reportage, and personal narrative to explore the origins of epidemics, drawing parallels between cholera—one of history’s most deadly and disruptive pandemic-causing pathogens—and the new diseases that stalk humankind today. She tracks each stage of cholera’s dramatic journey, from its emergence in the South Asian hinterlands as a harmless microbe to its rapid dispersal across the nineteenth-century world, all the way to its latest beachhead in Haiti. Along the way she reports on the pathogens now following in cholera’s footsteps, from the MRSA bacterium that besieges her own family to the never-before-seen killers coming out of China’s wet markets, the surgical wards of New Delhi, and the suburban backyards of the East Coast. Delving into the convoluted science, strange politics, and checkered history of one of the world’s deadliest diseases, Pandemic is a work of epidemiological history like no other, with urgent lessons for our own time. “Shah proves a disquieting Virgil, guiding us through the hells ruled by [infectious diseases] . . . the power of Shah's account lies in her ability to track simultaneously the multiple dimensions of the public-health crises we are facing.” —The Chicago Tribune